CONGRESS READIES IRAN FREEDOM FUNDING

The NY Sun ^ | December 4, 2003 | ELI LAKE

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Congress is preparing for the first time to authorize public funding for human rights and democracy activities inside the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Tucked inside the 2004 Omnibus Appropriations bill is language that instructs the State Department to spend $1.5 million “for making grants to educational, humanitarian and nongovernmental organizations and individuals inside Iran to support the advancement of democracy and human rights in Iran.”

While the amount is modest, it breaks a long-standing barrier against American spending inside Iran and could signal the Bush administration’s intention to no longer heed a 1981 agreement with Tehran that pledged that Washington would not interfere in the internal affairs of that country.

The expected passage of the spending measure next month would coincide with a campaign on the ground in Iran to urge citizens to boycott February’s elections to the Majlis, the Iranian parliament.

At the American Enterprise Institute yesterday, democracy activists in Iran speaking by teleconference said they had seen many buildings in their neighborhoods emblazoned with “Na,” Persian for no, the unofficial slogan of the upcoming boycott campaign.The push to keep Iranians away from the polls next year is in keeping with recent tactics of Iran’s democrats to avoid large demonstrations in favor of more diffuse actions.

Last March, municipal elections were boycotted and on July 9 many Iranians did not show up for work to commemorate the anniversary of violent crackdowns against students.

In the last three months, the Bush administration has signaled that it is not prepared to confront Iran’s government, a regime that the president nearly two years ago declared a member of the “axis of evil.”The Pentagon has chilled its ties in the last two months with anti-regime Iranian activists, while Secretary of State Powell last month praised a resolution from the International Atomic Energy Agency that found no evidence that the country intended to use uranium centrifuges it had kept hidden from the U.N. body for nuclear weapons.

At the same time, the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council concluded a series of diplomatic and trade agreements with the Islamic Republic last month with the blessing of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

While the executive branch softens its stance against Iran, many in Congress have pushed a harder line.

Earlier this year, Senator Brownback, a Republican of Kansas, introduced legislation that would have set aside $50 million each year for broadcasts from exiles into Iran and stated that American policy was to end the rule of the clerics in charge there.The proposal was opposed by the State Department and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, a Republican from Indiana.

But Mr. Brownback continued to push for some funding for those opposing Iran’s government, and he managed to get the rather modest $1.5 million into the appropriations legislation.

“This is an important precedent,” the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Clifford May, said. “For the first time we are seeing Washington give concrete support for the democratic forces in Iran.”

While the National Endowment for Democracy runs a handful of programs that aim to push democracy in Iran, all of them are grants to organizations in America that have supported reformists in Iran.The new instructions in the budget for next year would for the first time go toward programs on the ground in Iran.

The State Department in the past has been wary of American funding for programs inside Iran because of the 1981 Algiers Accord, which established a commission to settle outstanding property claims between Iran and America and pledged that future presidents would not interfere in the Islamic Republic’s internal affairs.

Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat of California, said he supported the money for Iranian democracy building.

“I hope that this is the start of a concerted effort by our government to assist the Iranian people in their struggle for a more representative government,” he said.

[Eala]

I'd feel a lot better about this if the State Department were not involved...