Iran to complain to UN over arrests in Iraq

Asharq Al-Awsat / Reuters ^

[Valin]

TEHRAN, (Reuters) - Iran said on Friday it would soon lodge a complaint with the U.N. Security Council about the arrest by U.S. troops of five Iranians, who Washington says were backing militants in Iraq but who Tehran says are diplomats. U.S. soldiers seized the men in a raid on an Iranian government office in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil on Jan. 11, hours after U.S. President George W. Bush pledged to crack down on the "flow of support" from Iran to Iraqi militants.

Washington regularly accuses Iran of encouraging violence in Iraq, a charge Tehran dismisses saying the U.S. occupiers are destabilising the country. Iran has demanded the immediate release of the Iranians. "Soon we will complain to the Security Council and the United Nations for this adventurism by America," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on state television. He did not say when Iran would take such a step. "Instead of securing Iraq, America is following heathen aims," he said, adding that the United States wanted "to make regional countries face off with Iran". Tehran accuses Washington of trying to line up nearby Arab countries, who are dominated by Sunni Muslims, against Iran, which like Iraq has a Shi'ite Muslim majority.

The arrest on Jan. 11, the second such detention in a month, have heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran, already at loggerheads over Iran's nuclear programme which U.S. officials say is aimed at making atomic bombs.

Iran insists its aims are civilian and part of plans to generate electricity.

[Earthdweller]

"Remember, the US is there only to assist the Iraqi goverment."

If the Iraqi government insists that we let these people go and there is intelligence that they are arming both sides of the conflict then it will appear to the Iraqi population that the government is indirectly assisting in the murders of civilians.

A no confidence builder I would say.

[Valin]

IRANIAN ARRESTED IN ERBIL IS WANTED IN AUSTRIA
AKI ^ | 1/17/07

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1768870/posts
Posted on 01/17/2007 8:19:37 AM CST by Valin


Tehran, 17 Jan. (AKI) - One of the five Iranians arrested last week by the US army in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil is wanted in Austria in connection with the assassination of Kurdish leader Andol Rahman Ghassemlu in 1989. Mahommad Jaafari Sharoudi was one of five Iranian officials detained last week in the Kurdish-controlled city on charges of being connected to a faction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Pasdaran, that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq.
(snip)