WASHINGTON Ñ After weeks of coaxing Iran's participation in the coalition against terrorism, the United States has now charged that Teheran is part of the problem.
The Bush administration yesteday accused Iran of recruiting Al Qaida members who have escaped Afghanistan as part of the regime's drive to gain control over Afghanistan.
Officials said Iran has trained Bin Laden forces for their eventual return
to Afghanistan in an attempt to undermine the new pro-Western government.
"I also know that there have been Iranians inside Afghanistan connected
to various tribal chiefs and
particularly in the Western area around Herat and that the United States had
forces embedded with those same people," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
said.
The United States yesterday for the first time also openly linked the Palestinan Authority to an arms shipment seized by Israel last week. That shipment originated in Iran.
On Thursday, President George Bush warned Iran to stop its support for
Al Qaida. Bush demanded that Teheran surrender what officials said are at
least hundreds of Al Qaida forces being harbored along the Iranian border
with Afghanistan.
"We would hope, for example, they wouldn't allow Al Qaida murderers to
hide in their country," Bush said. "We would hope that if that be the case,
if someone tries to flee into Iran, that they would hand them over to us. If
they are part of the coalition, then they need to be an active part of the
coalition. If they in any way, shape or form try to destabilize the
government, the coalition will deal with them, in diplomatic ways,
initially, and we would very much like them to be active participants in a
stable Afghanistan."
Bush's warning marred months of quiet U.S. efforts to reconcile with
Iran. U.S. officials had praised Iran for its help in the U.S.-led war in
Afghanistan and envisioned a new relationship between Teheran and
Washington.
But U.S. intelligence sources said that over the last two months Iran
has reneged on several commitments to Washington and has
increased support to groups deemed as terrorists. These include Middle East
insurgency groups such as Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Middle East Newsline reported.
"Iran continues to provide Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian
rejectionist groups Ñ notably Hamas, the Palestine Islamic Jihad, and Ahmad
Jibril's PFLP-GC Ñ with varying amounts of funding, safehaven, training,
and weapons," a State Department statement said.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that Iran was the supplier of the
weapons boat to the Palestinian Authority. The Karine-A, captured last week,
contained missiles, rockets and thousands of kilograms of explosives for
both the PA and Islamic groups. The officials said Iran is believed to have
sent two previous ships full of weapons to the PA.
"I want to make sure that the evidence is definitive, but I'm, like
many, beginning to suspect that those arms were headed in the wrong Ñ to
promote terror," Bush said. "And terror will never enable us to achieve
peace in the Middle East."
