Back to Brief on Iran
The Los Angeles Times, May 1 - ... Iran remains the world's worst sponsor of international terrorism, carrying out 13 assassinations in 1997, the State Department reported Thursday. The assessment, included in the department's annual survey of terrorism, is expected to trouble members of Congress, upset Iranian leaders and hamper attempts by both Washington and Tehran to ease their tense and antagonistic relations...
Most of the 13 assassinations last year occurred in northern Iraq, and included members of the People's Moujahedeen, an Iranian opposition group headquartered in Baghdad, and members of the opposition Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran.
The New York Times, May 1 - Iran remains "the most active state sponsor of terrorism" despite last year's election of a more moderate president, the State Department said Thursday.
"There is no evidence that Iranian policy has changed, and Iran continues both to provide significant support to terrorist organizations and to assassinate dissidents abroad," the report said... With the election of Khatami in Iran last year, Clinton administration officials said they hoped that he would move quickly to sever Iran's ties with a variety of terrorist organizations, including the Lebanese Hezbollah and the militant Palestinian group Hamas.
Khatami has denied that Iran is involved in terrorism and has vowed that if any evidence is developed to suggest a link between the government and terrorist acts, he would root it out. But the State Department report found strong ties between Tehran and terrorist groups.
The Washington Post, May 1 - Iran has remained a leading sponsor of international terrorism and assassinations, despite the country's election of a new president last August and a shift in some of its public rhetoric about terrorism, the Clinton administration said yesterday.
Issuing its annual survey of terrorist incidents around the globe, the State Department called Iran "the most active sponsor of state terrorism" in 1997. It blamed Iranian agents for "at least 13 assassinations," mostly involving opponents of the regime who resided in northern Iraq, and said Tehran continued to provide money, training and weapons to various Middle East terrorists.
"Terrorist activity directed from Iran has continued into 1998," a senior U.S. official told reporters on condition he not be named...the report notes that leaders of various terrorist organizations gathered last fall in Tehran to discuss enhanced coordination and seek more funds.
Iran's new leadership also reaffirmed
a foundation's offer of a $2.5 million reward for slaying British author
Salman Rushdie, continuing a policy in effect since 1989, the report notes.
Khatami, Khamenei, and Rafsanjani Meet With Hamas Leader, Associated Press, May 2
Iran's top leaders met Saturday with the head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas and pledged support for his struggle, Tehran Radio reported.
Supreme spiritual leader Ali Khamenei and President Mohammad Khatami held separate talks with Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian people will continue to support Palestinians despite the pressures and conspiracies by the Zionists and their supporters," Khamenei was quoted as saying.
President Khatami said during his meeting with Yassin that Israel owed its existence to "plundering, massacre and occupation," Iran's television reported.
Both Hamas and Iran reject the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian Oslo agreements. Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has accused Iran of bankrolling Hamas, his main opposition group.
Yassin, concluding a five-day visit to Tehran, also Iran's still influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iranian television said.
The television showed the wheelchair-bound
Yassin nodding in agreement as Khatami spoke.
Mullahs Admit Assassinating Resistance Members, Prepare for More, Reuter, May 3
Iran rejected U.S. charges that it was the world's biggest sponsor of terrorism and declared on Sunday it had the right to attack Iraq-based rebels.
"Iran cannot close its eyes to the rightful defense against those terrorists who transgress the territorial integrity of the Islamic sovereign state," the official Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Mahmoud Mohammadi as saying.
A U.S. State Department report issued on Thursday described Iran as the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, saying it carried out 13 assassinations in 1997, most of them in northern Iraq, against opposition activists of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran and the Mujahideen Khalq organization.
The Mujahideen Khalq condemned the Iranian statement and urged the United Nations Security Council to adopt punitive measures against the Iranian government.
"The (Tehran) regime is preparing the ground for further terrorist acts, military raids and air and missile attacks against the Iranian resistance's bases and combatants," the organization said in a statement.
Iran has acknowledged carrying out several attacks against Mujahideen Khalq targets in Iraq and at least one attack against Kurdish dissidents in northern Iraq.