Alleged Presence of Al-Qaeda Members in Iran Totally Baseless: FM spokesman
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi told reporters in his weekly address that Iran has been among the few countries which have always opposed the Taleban and Al-Qaeda and therefore the accusation would be totally baseless.
By leveling such lies, Assefi said, the U.S. is trying to undermine international bodies such as the United Nations in order to achieve its illegitimate interests.
By spreading these lies the U.S. is trying to encroach into the affairs of a sovereign state and get its hands into everything which is opposed by world public opinion, Assefi further said.
He advised White House officials "to heed world public opinion and renounce such a policy," saying it would be to their benefit.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, on Friday accused Iran of harboring members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network after they fled the U.S. bombing onslaught on Afghanistan.
Turning to Iran-Russia nuclear cooperation, the spokesman said that the cooperation is quite peaceful as the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant project is under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which has confirmed the peaceful uses for which the plant is intended.
He said that during President Mohammad Khatami's visit to Moscow a few months ago the two countries signed a 10-year cooperation agreement and the Russian offer to build more power projects falls within the framework of this agreement.
"In order to conserve energy, Western countries themselves put great pressure on Iran to build the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant and after Iran already spent millions of dollars on the project these countries reneged on their obligation to complete it. Thus, to avoid wasting more money Iran was forced to ask Russia to complete it," Assefi told reporters.
If Western countries themselves agreed to complete the project then there would have been no occasion to make the unfounded accusation that Iran is trying to gain access to nuclear weapons by building nuclear plants.
Pointing to the United Nations report released last Thursday on the massacre of Palestinians in Jenin camp, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the report, after the long delay, unfortunately didn't meet the expectations of the Islamic world.
The report by no means showed the depth of atrocities committed by the Zionist Army in the offensive it launched on Jenin camp on March 29.
The UN report, he said, on Israel's assault on the residents of the Jenin refugee camp blamed all sides in the catastrophe.
"The report of Secretary-General Kofi Annan avoided the word `massacre' and dismissed the truth that hundreds of Palestinian people were killed as a result of the Israeli raid," Assefi said.
Turning to the trip of the Saudi and Omani foreign ministers to Tehran on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, to discuss the Iraqi issue, Assefi said all the sides expressed satisfaction over the results of talks.
He said the talks focused on developments in the region, especially the likely U.S. attack on Iraq, developments in Palestine and also cooperation between Iran and the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC).
He said that all the sides were agreed that there was a need to activate the role of Islamic states in international developments in view of the increasing threats against these states, adding that all three states were opposed to the creation or heightening of tensions in the region.