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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (11655)	2/19/2002 9:40:20 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

The Vietnamization of US involvement in Afghanistan is under way.... Iran working with Afghan rebels By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES U.S. intelligence agencies have spotted scores of Iranian intelligence and military personnel deep inside Afghanistan working to destabilize the interim government. The Iranians include agents from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the Iranian spy service, and Iranian special forces troops from the Revolutionary Guards Corps, said officials familiar with intelligence reports. According to the officials, the Iranians are working with several hundred Afghan fighters operating near the strategic city of Mazar-e-Sharif in an effort to undermine the pro-U.S. government now in place in Kabul. The Iranian Islamic fundamentalists also are working to prevent the return of Afghanistan's former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, from exile in Italy. He could return as soon as next month. "They are armed to the teeth, and they have lots of money to buy people off" - a common Afghan political tactic, one U.S. official said of the pro-Iranian fighters. U.S. officials have said Iranians are operating near the Afghan border with Iran. But the new intelligence indicates an extensive covert action program in other parts of the country as well, the officials said. Disclosure of the covert activities comes as the Iranian government announced yesterday that Afghanistan's interim prime minister, Hamid Karzai, will travel to Tehran next week for talks. The Iranian operations are prompting heightened worries inside the Bush administration because of the fragility of the interim government in Afghanistan. An Afghan Cabinet minister was assassinated last week by rival warlords. "It's a concern," a senior official said of the covert Iranian activities. "As a neighbor of [Afghanistan], the Iranians have a particular interest in the region close to their border." Zalmay Khalilzad, the Bush administration's special envoy to Afghanistan, said last week that the administration had formally protested the Iranian activities to the Foreign Ministry of Iran. He said the Iranians are arming and financing Islamic fighters in Afghanistan who oppose the government now led by Mr. Karzai. "We have given them [the Iranians] the information we have with regard to what we think is happening, particularly with regard to al Qaeda presence in Iran and movement across Iran," Mr. Khalilzad said in an interview Feb. 15 with the British Broadcasting Corp. U.S. officials said yesterday that the Iranians have sent 200 to 300 Afghan Islamic fighters from Iran to the area around Mazar-e-Sharif during the past several weeks. [...] washtimes.com