Senior Iranian Cleric Warns U.S. Over Iraq
10.05.2003 [03:06]
Iran's influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warned Washington on Friday Iran would actively oppose any prolonged U.S. presence in Iraq.
Iran, which fought a bitter war with Iraq in the 1980s, adopted a neutral stance during the U.S.-led military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein.
'We stayed neutral in the Iraq war, but we will not remain neutral in the future if America wants to run Iraq,' Rafsanjani said in a Friday prayers sermon in Tehran broadcast live on state radio.
Washington, which labels Iran part of the so-called 'axis of evil' and accuses it of harboring ambitions to build nuclear arms, has warned Tehran not to meddle in postwar Iraq by exploiting its ties to Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority.
Rafsanjani, who heads Iran's top arbitration body, the Expediency Council, did not elaborate on what any such change in Iran's neutral stance over Iraq could mean.
'We believe all Muslims should help Iraqis so that the Americans...cannot make a den for themselves there,' he said.
But he said if Washington handed Iraq back to its people, 'their crimes, their killings and destruction during the war can be justified, because (the Iraqi) people will have freedom.'
Earlier, state radio aired a farewell address by Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), who is due to return to Iraq on Saturday after more than two decades in exile in Iran.
'The future of Iraq belongs to Islam and we should not refrain from any efforts aimed at securing Iraq's independence,' he told worshippers gathered at Tehran University.
Hakim's close ties to Iran and the armed militia known as the Badr Forces which he commands have aroused some alarm in Washington. But Hakim has sought to play down those fears, stressing he is not seeking to remake Iraq in the image of Iran's Islamic Republic.
'Our goals are independence, realizing the will of the Iraqi people, the implementation of justice...and the establishment of good relations with neighbors and friendly states,' he said.
Iran also vowed on Friday to work closely with the U.N. atomic watchdog to show its nuclear program was solely for peaceful purposes.
A Foreign Ministry official said during arms talks in Geneva that Iran did 'not have anything to hide' and accused the United States of trying to create a 'quasi-crisis' over Iran.
Reuters
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