BAGHDAD - An Iranian exile group based in Iraq said Iranian "terrorists" attacked their military training camp south of Baghdad on Tuesday but caused no casualties.

It said the attackers crossed the Iraq-Iran border early on Tuesday morning to assault a nearby Mujahideen Khalq's camp in Kut, some 172 km (103 miles) south of Baghdad but they missed their target.

"Terrorists of the mullahs' regime fired ten 107 mm mini-Katyusha rockets on a base camp of the (Mujahideen) National Liberation Army located southeast of Kut, 50 km (30 miles) from the Iranian borders," the group said in a statement handed to foreign journalists in Baghdad.

"None of the rockets hit the target. They landed in the surrounding fields and residential areas," it said.

It said Mujahideen leader Massoud Rajavi, whose group opposes the Tehran government, protested to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and the Security Council, it added.

Their bases have been the target of air and rocket attacks by Iran and their office in Baghdad, now ringed with a concrete wall, has weathered several mortar and bomb attacks.

Municipal Officials Accused of Corruption, Reuter, July 29

TEHRAN - Iranian police have arrested four senior officials of the Tehran municipality for alleged financial corruption, Iranian newspapers reported on Tuesday.

The English-language Iran News and Iran Daily said among those arrested were Tehran municipality's financial and administrative director, its security chief and the mayor of a Tehran suburb.

The anti-corruption drive has taken a political turn with hard-line and conservative Islamic newspapers and parliament deputies calling for investigations into officials close to outgoing President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and President-elect Mohammad Khatami.

Internal Feuding, State-controlled daily Salam, July 16

Why is it that with the passage of time the gap between the two main factions in the political scene gets wider and wider? ...

The defeated faction resorts to humiliation in an attempt to beat the future government. The victorious faction tries to counter the rivalries instead of focusing its power on finding solutions to the problems and running the affairs.

This is a dangerous political disease. In the 20 years of this Islamic regime, there was never any time like today, when we experience this dreadful feeling of rivalries lead to enmity.

 2 Senators Ask Albright to Rethink Iran-Turkey Pipeline, Dow Jones News, July 29

WASHINGTON - Two key U.S. senators want U.S. Secretary of State to look into reports that the U.S. won't bar a Turkey-Turkmenistan-Iran consortium from building a natural gas pipeline across Iran to Turkey, according to a letter they sent her Monday evening.

Sens. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee ,and Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East Affairs, wrote to Albright asking her to reevaluate her department's ruling on the deal.

"Recent administration signals that it will not oppose a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Iran send exactly the wrong message at the wrong time and is a classic illustration of mixed signals; it indicates a weakening in policy of Iranian containment and of the spirit of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act; it sends a message to our allies which is contradictory from the one we have been delivering; and it helps fill Iranian coffers and thus furthers their ability to sponsor terrorism and acquire weapons of mass destruction," the two senators wrote in their letter to Albright.

Albright Cautious on Meaning of Pipeline Decision, Reuter, July 29

  SINGAPORE - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Tuesday cautioned against interpreting too much into the Clinton administration's decision not to oppose a $1.6 billion pipeline from Central Asia to Turkey through Iran.

"We're not going to operate on faith. We're going to look for specific actions," she added, repeating the U.S. call for Iran to stop support for terrorism, undermining the Middle East peace process and trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

"I think it is a mistake to get ahead of ourselves. We have some very, very serious problems with Iran, not ones that are figments of our imagination," she added.

But many congressmen not only oppose weakening the U.S. position, they have called for a tougher global policy against Teheran.

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