IRAN KEEN TO NORMALISE WITH BERLIN AND CLOSER TIES WITH MOSCOW ALLIES
By Parviz Mardani in Bonn and Safa Haeri in Paris
BONN 2nd Feb. (IPS) Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi’s visit to Germany, scheduled for 8 to 10 of this month, surprised many in the German capital of Berlin and was received with mixed reactions.
Diplomatic sources said the visit; coming in the aftermath of controversial verdicts pronounced by an Iranian Islamic revolution court against several reformists Iranians who had participated at a conference in Berlin last April was aimed at « putting Iran-German relations back on the track ».
Seventeen reformists Iranians of all walks, including a cleric, several journalists, secularist lawyer and scholar, poet and writer took part at a meeting that was organised by the Heinrich Boel Cultural Institute with the tacit approval of Iranian government.
But the conference was badly disrupted by Iranian opposition groups, as an Iranian actress partly took off her cloths while a man exhibited nude and a woman danced sexy dances.
The leader-controlled Iran Television showed only these provocative parts of the three days venue. Ruling hard liners said the conference was aimed at toppling the Islamic regime of Iran and accused all the participants of having engaged in activities against the Islamic Republic and offended the leader.
Six of the participants got harsh sentences, the strongest being handed down on Mr. Akbar Ganji, a well known investigative journalist and researcher as well as Mr. Sa’id Sadr, an official translator at the German Embassy in Tehran and Mr. Khalil Rostamkhani, an independent interpreter, condemned to 10 years imprisonment and years of exile in remote areas, even though the last two ones were not present at the Conference.
The condemnations dealt an immediate negative blow to relations between Tehran and Bonn. German Foreign Minister Mr. Joscka Fischer summoned Iranian ambassador in Berlin, Mr. Ahmad Azizi, for « urgent consultation », expressing Germany’s « anger and dismay » at the condemnations.
Two women, lawyer and human rights activist Mrs. Mehranguiz Kaar, who suffers from a breast cancer and independent publisher Mrs. Shahla Lahiji received each four years while students leader Ali Afshari and veteran politician and journalist Ezzatollah Sahabi were given five and four and a half each.
German press denounced the sentences and so did the Heinrich Boel Institute which, in a statement, called on the Iranian government to revise the condemnations.
Sources in Berlin said the forthcoming visit of Mr. Kharrazi means Iran is keen to normalise its relations with Germany and by extension with the European Union in the one hand and make sure that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder would visit Tehran as the guest of his Iranian counterpart, Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami, who visited Germany last July, on the other.
Iranian sources for their part speculated that the expressed desire of Iranian government to improve relations with Europe could, by proxy, means that President Khatami would run in the next presidential race due next June and seek another four years term mandate.
So far, he has not announced officially his intentions, but his younger brother, Dr. Mohammad Reza, the leader of Islamic Iran participation Party has assured Mr. Khatami would seek a new mandate.
Iran-Germany relations were briefly suspended after a Berlin Court that was judging the assassination of 4 leaders of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan by Iranian-Lebanese agents in Berlin on September 1992 ruled that all senior Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Khameneh’i and the then president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were personally involved in the assassination of Iranian dissidents both inside and outside Iran.
In retaliation, Iran arrested Mr. Helmut Hofer, a German businessman and condemned him to death for having sexual relationship with an Iranian Muslim woman.
Eventually, Mr. Hofer was freed after two years and payment of some half a million DM As ransom to Iranian authorities.
Anxious to give a firm boost to the visit of Mr. Khatami to Germany, the Foreign Ministry decided to bring 17 prominent Iranian reformists to Berlin and provide them an opportunity to explain to the German public opinion the reform trend in Iran, a process that is put to the credit of Mr. Khatami.
But as it badly backfired not only on the participants, but also on the whole reform process, as, on orders from Mr. Khameneh’i, several influential journalists were arrested and all reformist and independent press, some 30 titles, were shut by the Islamic Judiciary.
IRAN GO CLOSER TO FORMER SOVIET BLOC
Meanwhile, Mr. Kharrazi arrived in Minsk Thursday for talks on bilateral issues with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus foreign ministry announced.
Kharazi, who arrived after a three-day visit to Ukraine, is due also to meet Prime Minister Vladimir Ermoshin and his Belarussian counterpart Mikhail Khvostov.
He will participate at the inauguration of the Iranian Embassy in Minsk and meet also Iranian students in that former Soviet Republic. Iranian interests in Belarus were previously represented by a legation at Kiev.
Ukraine said on Wednesday that test flights of its Iranian-built Antonov-140 passenger planes would take place next month.
Ukraine sold a production licence for its 52-seat An-140 aircraft last year to Iran, the only foreign market its cash-strapped aircraft producers have yet managed to enter.
"We are working very successfully in implementing the An-140 project and the first test flight of the plane will take place on February 11", Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko told a news conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Kharrazi.
He also said he and Kharazzi discussed transporting Iranian oil and gas via Ukraine to Europe. He did not say how they would achieve that and whether, a likely, Russia would be involved, but Mr. Kharrazi said the Iranian gas could reach Kiev by extending pipes to Azerbaijan and Georgia and further to Ukraine.
Commenting on the visits to Ukraine and Belarus, analysts said Tehran was seeking « new friends » after it failed to achieve its goals in Central Asia, where it was after gaining the religious-political leadership of the region on the ruins of the former Soviet Union.
«Meeting with stiff competition from China and Russia in the one hand, but most fiercely from Turkey and Pakistan on the other, Iran decided the area was not worth economically and politically, turning its attention to Moscow’s allies", one Russian observer pointed out in Moscow.
Iran has already very close working co-operation in military and nuclear fields with Russia which, for its part, has good relations with Kiev and Minsk, both former pillars in the making of Soviet Union », the source added. ENDS IRAN GERMANY 2201