WASHINGTON Ñ U.S. officials said Teheran has ignored warning from the United States and has provided safe haven to hundreds of Al
Qaida members who escaped from Afghanistan. The officials
said Iran has allowed the insurgents to resettle in its territory or move
west
toward the Persian Gulf and the Levant, Middle East Newsline reported.
Zalmay Khaliazad, advisor to President George Bush on the Near East and
South Asia, said Iran has acknowledged that Al Qaida insurgents are in the
country and pledged to expel them. So far, Iran has not done so, he said,
rather Teheran has
sought to use Al Qaida to undermine the U.S.-supported regime in
Afghanistan.
"Hard-line, unaccountable elements of the Iranian regime facilitated the
movement of Al Qaida terrorists Ñ escaping from Afghanistan," Khaliazad
said. "For months, it refused to do what Pakistan had done to arrest Al
Qaida members crossing the Afghan border into Iran and turning them over to
the coalition or the new Afghan authority."
"The Iranian regime should follow up with its own people, the reformist
elements in the government and the international community on how many Al
Qaida members are in Iran and who and how many have transited out of Iran,"
Khaliazad said.
The assertion came amid a quiet U.S. effort to reduce tensions with
Iran. On Friday, the London-based Al Hayat daily reported that the Bush
administration sent Teheran a message through the Swiss embassy that
stressed Washington's desire to improve relations with Iran.
Addressing the Washington-based American-Iranian Council on March 13,
Khaliazad expressed disappointment with U.S. efforts to reconcile with Iran.
The U.S. official, who also serves as Bush's envoy to Afghanistan, said Iran
continues to fund terrorism, particularly Hizbullah and Islamic insurgency
groups.
"It is a particularly dangerous prospect for an Iranian government, not
accountable to the Iranian people and supporting terrorists, to acquire
nuclear weapons," Khaliazad said.
The American-Iranian Council is financed by major U.S. corporations that
have lobbied for the lifting of U.S. sanctions from Teheran. The
corporations include ExxonMobil and Conoco.
At the Senate Armed Services Committee, CIA director George Tenet
provided a similar assessment. "Teheran has also failed to move decisively
against Al Qaida members who have relocated to Iran from Afghanistan," he
said on Tuesday.
In his address to the American-Iranian Council, Sen. Joseph Biden,
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said he favors a dialogue
with Teheran. "I believe than an improved relationship with Iran is in the
naked self-interest of the United States of America," Biden said.
But U.S. officials said any dialogue with Iran would have to focus on
its support for Islamic insurgency groups and weapons of mass destruction.
They said the combination of a nuclear weapons development program and
sponsor of Islamic violence makes Iran into a global threat.
