DUBAI - Mohammad Khatami has attacked U.S. policies on Iran and said his country would remain opposed to the Middle East peace process as long as it was not based on justice for the Palestinians.

Khatami made his comments to the Saudi-owned pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper, which said on Monday it interviewed the Iranian president while on a visit to China last week.

"...Alas, the United States of America does not have good policies towards Iran. Iran has not backed off in any way on its principles and the American accusations against Iran are unrealistic accusations," he said.

Asked if Iran was changing its position on the Middle East peace process, Khatami told al-Hayat:

"We do not consider what is called the peace process in the Middle East as a successful process, and the reason is that the basic element in the process, which is the rights of the Palestinian people, has been ignored and not given importance."
 

Election Office Attacked In Tehran, Agence France Presse, June 26

TEHRAN - Groups of Iranian fundamentalists attacked the election offices of a candidate close to President Mohammad Khatami in the western sector of Tehran, the government paper Iran reported.

It said they attacked the campaign headquarters of Rassul Montajabnia, a former member of the radical movement who is standing in the second round of parliamentary elections in the Iranian capital.
 

Khatami's Culture Ministry Punishes CNN, CBS For "Breaking Rules", Agence France Presse, June 26

TEHRAN - Unspecified steps have been taken against US television networks CBS and CNN for breaking rules in their coverage of Iran, the culture ministry's director general for foreign news media said Monday.

"As part of the news policy in force in Iran, measures have been taken against activities by these two media, which have broken the rules," Mohammad Khoshvaght said, quoted by the official news agency.

Khoshvaght hinted to the Tehran Times Thursday that restrictions had been imposed on CNN and that it had been unable to cover the inauguration of the new parliament in late May.

CBS has been accused of defaming Iran by broadcasting an interview with Ahmad Behbahani, who claimed to be a former Iranian secret service agent.
 

Turning A Blind Eye To Iran, The Washington Times (Editorial), June 23

''Surely, the time has come for America and Iran to enter a new season in which mutual trust may grow and the quality of warmth supplant the long cold winter of our mutual discontent," said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in March.

Unfortunately, Iran seems partial to the long, cold winter and White House efforts to improve relations may have caused harm to national security. A recent report by a bipartisan commission on terrorism faults the administration for having failed to win international help in pressuring Iran to cooperate with an investigation into the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 American servicemen. "U.S. efforts to signal support for political reform in Iran could be misinterpreted in Iran or by U.S. allies as signaling a weakening resolve on counterterrorism," the report also said. Surely, this is a dangerous signal to send. The administration's policy towards Iran has been based on wishful thinking, eloquently summed up by Mrs. Albright's statement…

If an Iranian… interviewed by the CBS News program "60 Minutes" is to be believed, Iran masterminded not only the Khobar Towers housing complex bombing in Saudi Arabia, but also the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland… Mr. Behbahani, who was being held in a Turkish camp, said that he preferred to hand these documents over to the media, rather than the U.S. government, for fear that the White House would "bury" them. Robert Baer, a terrorism specialist formerly at the CIA, substantiated the dissident's concern, and said that having to react to proof of Iranian terrorism would be the White House's "worst nightmare."…

Mr. Behbahani may not be telling the truth… Still, his account would appear to substantiate widespread speculation in the intelligence community that Iran played a key role in these two vicious attacks. Michael Scharf, who served as counsel to the State Department's counterterrorism unit from 1989 to 1991, told The Washington Times in May that U.S. intelligence sources are convinced that Iran was involved in the Lockerbie bombing, and that it chose a U.S. target four days before Christmas in retaliation for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian commercial airliner by the USS Vincennes. Of the 290 people killed in that Airbus accident, 250 of them were Iranians…

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