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Rumsfeld, Rice Criticize Iran On Afghanistan
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| Rumsfeld says Iran let Al Qaeda members in through porous border |
By S.M. Khalid,
IOL correspondent in Washington
WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld accused Iran Sunday of letting some Taliban and Al-Qaeda members escape from Afghanistan.
"There isn't any doubt in my mind that the porous border between Iran and Afghanistan has been used for Al-Qaeda and Taliban to move into Iran and find refuge,'' he claimed.
Rumsfeld also said the United States “has any number of reports'' that Iran has been contributing to instability inside Afghanistan by arming various Afghan factions.
President George W. Bush last week called Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil'' that might give terrorist groups chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Iranian officials have denounced Bush's comments and denied giving any help to the Taliban or Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Iran's government had opposed the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan before the Taliban's collapse late last year.
"We hated each other and we never had any commonalities,'' the head of Iran's powerful Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, said Friday.
However, interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, during his visit to Washington last week, praised Iranian President Ali Khatami for his offers of diplomatic help and economic assistance in rebuilding Afghanistan. He told reporters that he had spoken frequently to the Iranian leader and would be accepting an invitation for talks in Tehran in the near future.
Speaking before the National Press Club, Karzai dismissed reports that Iran was trying to destabilize his interim government by allegedly backing rival warlords. He said Iran had offered Afghanistan a half-billion in aid over the next five years.
Until the deadly September 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside Washington, Pakistan, a regional rival of Iran, backed the Taliban regime. Tehran had long cut-off diplomatic ties with the Taliban, following the murder of several Iranian diplomats in Kabul by the militia. And Iran had frequently criticized the Taliban's conservative interpretation of Islamic law.
After September 11, Pakistan has strongly supported the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, and Rumsfeld on Sunday criticized Iran for not taking similar actions.
"The Iranians have not done what the Pakistan government has done - put troops along the border to prevent terrorists from escaping out of Afghanistan into their country,'' Rumsfeld said, acknowledging that some Al-Qaeda fighters probably have slipped into Pakistan despite the blockade.
"We have any number of reports that Iran has been permissive and allowed transit through their country of Al-Qaeda,'' the defense secretary said on ABC's "This Week.''
Asked if the United States planned any response to Iran's actions, Rumsfeld said, "We don't announce things we're going to do before we do them.''
Bush warned Iranian officials in January not to harbor Al-Qaeda fighters and not to try to destabilize Afghanistan's new government. If the warning were ignored, Bush said the United States would deal with Iran "in diplomatic ways, initially.''
The president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the United States also was concerned about possible "Iranian attempts to surreptitiously influence Afghan politics at a very delicate time.''
The relationship between those neighbors, she said on "Fox News Sunday'' "should be above board, it should be transparent.'' Rice has long been an outspoken critic of the Iranian government.
In a foreign policy article before Bush was inaugurated, Rice claimed Iran was funding Islamic extremism in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, specifically with its alleged support of the Taliban. Many regional analysts, who pointed out the strong antipathy between Tehran and the Taliban, greeted the claim with skepticism and derision.
The Bush Administration's aggressive stance toward Iran followed attempts by the Clinton Administration and the Khatami government to thaw relations, which had been severed by the sacking of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and the holding of U.S. hostages in Iran until January 1981.
Although Washington has maintained economic sanctions against Iran, U.S. and Iranian diplomats have held a number of discussions in Europe. In addition, several prominent U.S. scholars and former diplomats favor re-establishing diplomatic and economic ties with Iran.
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