Defector's Lockerbie claim may torpedo Clinton's rapprochement with Iran

WASHINGTON -- A Clinton administration effort to improve relations with Iran could be torpedoed by allegations by an Iranian defector that Teheran masterminded the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am aircraft over Scotland as well as terrorist outrages against Israel.

U.S. officials said the allegations of a former Iranian intelligence official that Teheran ordered the Pan Am bombing in which 270 people were killed could stymie efforts by President Bill Clinton to reconcile with the Islamic regime in Teheran. An official also named Iran as the mastermind of the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Middle East Newsline reports.

Already, Iran has blasted the allegation, saying the defector was a member of the Mujahadeen Khalq group, classified by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization.

U.S. officials said the credibility of the Iranian agent has not been determined and pointed out that Libya and the Palestinians have also been blamed for the bombing. Officials said previous Iranian defectors were determind to have provided false of insubstantiated evidence of Iranian complicity in terrorism and nuclear weapons production.

On Sunday, CBS television reported that the CIA was debriefing an Iranian defector who had documents to prove Iran's involvement in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103. The defector fled to Turkey and from there made his way to U.S. intelligence agents and claimed credit for the Lockerbie attack. Iranian opposition figures have confirmed that the defector, identified as Ahmad Behbahani, fled Iran.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the CBS report was interesting and must be checked. She would not elaborate.

"But you have to remember that the Pan Am 103 trial is going on now," Ms. Albright said. "I think it's inappropriate to comment on the specifics of it. That trial is in the process, and it's been in preparation a long time. I'm sure that they will consider all the facts."

The CIA has refused to confirm or deny the CBS report.

On Monday, Turkey announced that an Iranian ex-intelligence agent is in Turkey and has applied for asylum in the United States. At the same time, Iranian deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Adeli arrived in Ankara, where he delivered a letter to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. The letter invited Turkish President Ahmet Sezer to a summit on Saturday in Teheran.

CBS said the defector claimed he was Behbahani, who coordinated all of Iran's overseas acts of terrorism since 1990. "He told us it was Iran, not Libya, that planned and directed the blowing up of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people,'' CBS said. "If his story can be confirmed, and American intelligence is trying to do that right now, it would not only disrupt the trial of the two Libyans charged with that bombing, it could interfere with the Clinton administration's efforts at relaxing and improving relations with Iran."

Currently, two Libyans intelligence agents, Abdel Basset Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, are on trial in a Scottish court in the Netherlands for the bombing. Attorneys for the two defendants have charged that Iranian-backed Palestinians destroyed the Pan Am airliner in revenge for the downing of an Iranian plane by a U.S. warship in early 1988 in which 290 passengers and crew were killed.

CBS said Behbahani asserts that he proposed that Palestinian opposition leader Ahmed Jibril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, bomb a U.S. airliner. "Jibril replied by saying he agreed with the plan and that he sent a list of requirements which included explosives and other things that he needed in order for the operation to be carried out," the television said.

Behbahani said Libyans were trained in Iran for 90 days. The squad was trained in how to use a sophisticated bomb to be placed in a U.S. passenger plane.

Robert Baer, a former CIA terrorism expert, said Behbahani possessed classified information known only to members of the intelligence community. He said the CIA has always suspected that Iran was trying to take revenge for the 1988 attack on the Iranian airliner.

''He's the only person that has tied Libya and Iran into Pan Am 103, into the Lockerbie bombing," Baer said. "This is the first authoritative source that I've ever heard that connected the two countries together. It was always a mystery. There were pieces of solid evidence that Iran was planning to shoot down an American airliner, but none of it was absolutely conclusive. And then once the forensic evidence was found on the ground which pointed at Libya the prosecutors and investigators were forced to drop the Iranian angle and look at Libya instead. It was totally forgotten.''

Behbahani also asserted that he had evidence that Iran bombed Khobar Towers in 1996 in which 19 U.S. soldiers were killed. He said Jibril's group under the direction of Iran coordinated the attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994.

Many members of the terrorist squad were Syrians, CBS said.

In London, the Energy Compass newsletter reported that the United States continues to oppose foreign oil investment in Iran. This includes swapping oil to facilitate the export of oil from the Caspian region, which lacks infrastructure.