Back to Brief on Iran
OSLO - Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik pledged to step up pressure on Iran to lift a nine-year-old death edict on Salman Rushdie after talks with the British author on Friday.
Bondevik said the Iranian government should lift the nine-year-old fatwa death order on Rushdie if it wanted warmer ties with western nations.
Bondevik, an ordained priest in Norway's Lutheran church, said his centrist government would not encourage trade ties with Iran, would oppose any loans to Iran by the World Bank and would not allow any official visits from Iran.
Rushdie said he still lived with uncertainty about the fatwa. "The best information I'm given, by the British security services, is that they believe the Iranians are still interested in carrying out the fatwa," he said.
"While it's true that it's in the nature of security briefings to take the darkest possible picture...I have to take that very seriously."
Mullahs’ Leader Rejects Rapprochement with US,
Agence France Presse, March 27
TEHRAN - The head of the Iranian judicial
system, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, rejected any reconciliation between his
country and the United States on Friday, a day after Washington called
for direct talks with Tehran.
"A rapprochement with oppression (the United States) is impossible," Yazdi said as he led weekly Friday prayers before several thousand Shiite Moslem faithful at Tehran University.
"Oppression is hostile to Islam as a political power and what happened in Algeria and Turkey proves it.
France Defends Itself against Iranian Protest,
Reuter, March 29
PARIS - France is investigating an Iranian protest about security at a reception on U.N. property in Paris where demonstrators attacked an Iranian minister and it will reply soon, the foreign ministry said on Sunday.
The ministry said that, because of the venue, French police were not responsible for the security at the event on Friday at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The target of the assault was the Iranian minister of culture and Islamic guidance.
No one at UNESCO was available for comment, but an eyewitness, who attended the reception and declined to be named, said protesters had thrown paint at the Iranian minister.
Overview
BERLIN - Tehran has been linked to a series of killings of Iranian dissidents on foreign soil, according to a full version of a Berlin court verdict delivered last year and made available to journalists on Friday.
The court convicted three Lebanese and an Iranian last April for the 1992 killing of four Iranian Kurdish exiles in Berlin and concluded that Iran's political leaders had ordered their deaths.
Iran denied involvement in that attack or any other alleged acts of state terrorism.
The court's full and final version of its verdict, a 395-page document which was only recently completed, drew parallels between the 1992 Berlin killings and attacks on dissidents dating back to 1987.
"The type of (gun) silencer and weapons used also indicate similarities with the Hamburg attack," it said, referring to the killing of an Iranian pilot and political dissident in Hamburg in 1987.
Many of the names of witnesses who gave evidence in the nearly four-year trial in Berlin as well as places and victims' names were blacked out.
"Persecution and liquidation of opposition figures or other people out of favor for political reasons find their visible expression in statements by well-known personalities in the Iranian leadership and in attacks where the clues point to Iran," the verdict said.
"The regime in Iran pursued its line further, by seeking out opposition parties and groups also on foreign soil and to oppose them violently whenever possible," the verdict said.
The verdict's final written version went further than the version read out in court. But, while it linked Tehran with the other attacks, it stopped short of holding Iran directly responsible for them.
In his April verdict, Judge Frithjof Kubsch reiterated the court's view that a Committee for Special Operations of top Iranian leaders sanctioned attacks abroad.
It was the first time a European court had clearly attributed political responsibility for any of the dozens of killings of Iranian opposition figures abroad since the Islamic revolution in 1979.
[Referring to the document released by the Berlin Court, the NCR called for the cancellation of the visit to Tehran by the Speaker of the Italian Parliament and considered it contrary to the highest interests of the people of Iran.
It added that shaking hands with the officials of such a murderous regime will not help improve the situation of human rights in Iran or halt the export of terrorism.]