AMIDST OUTCRIES IN IRAN, TEHRAN AND BERLIN TO SOOTHE ANGER AT SENTENCES

By Parviz Mardani

BERLIN 16^th Jan. (IPS)       As both Iran and Germany tried Monday to prevent possible degradation in their relations following the condemnation of six Iranians accused of having participated in a controversial conference held in Berlin last April, newspapers and politicians on either side condemned the verdicts, describing them as “politically motivated”.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Monday he remain committed to improving ties with Iran and bringing firm support for Iran reformers.

In a brief statement, Mr. Schroeder denied reports published by "Der Spiegel" saying the Chancellor had postponed a visit to Iran planned for the spring because Berlin “could not see a positive political climate" there.

"The German government is interested in an improvement in German-Iranian relations and hopes that President Mohammad Khatami's reform forces will prevail in the internal Iranian power struggle" a statement from his office further said.

"Chancellor Schroeder is firmly maintaining his intention of visiting Tehran in the not-too-distant future. The timing of this trip has to be carefully chosen, however, to facilitate the desired improvement and normalisation of German-Iranian relations."

Iranian conservatives reacted angrily to the press reports that Schroeder was postponing his trip.

"Germany's mentality is exactly the same as during the Hitler era", Mahmud Ahmadinezhad, a leading member of the Islamic Association of Engineers, a right-wing pressure group, told the "Resalat", a newspaper reflecting the views of the Bazaar and orthodox oligarchy.

"Not only our ambassador shall not offer any explanation, but he must tell the Germans that the best thing for them to do is for the Chancellor not to come to Iran", wrote "Keyhan", the mouthpiece of the Intelligence Ministry controlled by the leader.

For its part, the leader-controlled Tehran Radio, in an authorised commentary that reflects the official point of view repeated an old accusation that German government and media were controlled by "international Zionism", receiving their orders from Israel, a State the the Islamic Republic does not recognise the right to existence.

But the official Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was more cautious, even though he warned Germany against making "any connection" between the verdicts issued by an Islamic revolutionary court for six out of some 20 reformists and independent Iranian personalities who had participated at the Berlin meeting and Tehran-Berlin relations. relations.                                             

Dismissing as "unreasonable and unacceptable" an earlier German decision to summon the Iranian ambassador in Berlin for "urgent consultations", the Iraqi-born Assefi described the move as termed as an "uncommon interference" in Iranian internal affairs".                             

"The Islamic Republic will not allow opposition groups to use it as a scapegoat to disrupt friendly relations between Iran and Germany," the Iraqi-born spokesman told a press conference and called on German officials to take the issue into account with "wide insight to spare Tehran-Berlin relations any harm".              

His remarks come after German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had expressed his "deep concern" over the verdicts to the Iranian ambassador Mr. Ahmad Azizi.

Observers said of particular concern for Mr. Fischer is the case of Mr. Sa'id Sadr, an official translator at the German embassy in Tehran. Though he was not present at the conference, yet he was condemned to ten years of imprisonment and exile to a remote town.

The harshest sentence, ten years of jail and five years of exile to a southern village, was handed on Mr. Akbar Ganji, a well known and respected investigative journalist and scholar researcher who, in a series of articles and books, had disclosed the deathly roles played by Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani, his notorious Intelligence minister Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian as well as some influential ayatollahs all closely associated with the fundamentalist leader in the murder of over one hundred Iranian dissidents, all prominent political and intellectuals, both inside and outside Iran.

Mr. Khalil Rostamkhani, also an interpreter and a former communist activist like Mr. Sadr, was given nine years of imprisonment and exile.

Mr. Ali Afshari, a young students leader, 75 years-old veteran politician and journalist Ezzatollah Sahabi, lawyer and human rights activist Mrs. Mehranguiz Kar and and Mrs. Shahla Lahiji, an independent publisher with the reputation of being "feminist" were sentenced to respectively five, four and half and four years terms.

Regardless of the fact that not only the Iranian Judiciary is under the direct control of the leader and acts as his police and political arm, Mr. Assefi reiterated that the Judiciary and its affiliated courts were independent and the convicts Iranian nationals.           

Very intense both politically and economically until the end of the nineties, relations between Tehran and Berlin were cut by Germany for few months after a Berlin High Court ruled on 10 May 1997 that all senior Iranian clerical rulers, including Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the leader and former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were directly involved in the assassination of Iranian dissidents.

The "historic" ruling came after five years of extensive investigations concerning the assassination of four leaders of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPIK), among them Dr. Sadeq Sharafkandi, the General Secretary of the Party in a Berlin Restaurant on September 1992 by a mixed Iranian-Lebanese hit team dispatched from Tehran.

In a sign of support for Germany, all other members of the European Union but Greece also recalled their ambassadors from Tehran, ending German-sponsored policy of "dialogue" with the Islamic Republic.

Relations further soured after, in an effort to exchange Mr. Kazem Darabi, a high-ranking agent of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry alleged to be the "brain" behind the machine gunning of the four dissidents, Iranian authorities arrested a German businessman and sentenced him to death on charges of having sex with an Iranian Muslim woman in the one hand and on the other, the German had arrested an Iranian accused of spying on other Iranian groups and individuals opposed to the Tehran regime.

However, all EU ambassadors, including the German one returned to Iran and ties with Bonn started to improve following the landslide victory of Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami in May 1997 presidential elections, promising some limited political, social and cultural reforms at home and detente abroad.

Berlin was the third Western European capital Mr. Khatami visited officially after Rome and Paris. To make his State visit a great success, Mr. Fischer, when visiting Tehran, had the idea to invite several "stars" of the Iranian political scenes, including journalists, scholars, intellectuals, activists "outside the Establishment" and a religious reformer.

Hence the Berlin Conference, organised by the Heinrich Boel Institute, an independent cultural organisation close to the Green Party, the junior partner of Mr. Schroeder Social-Democrat government, to debate the future of reforms in Iran in the aftermath of the victory scored by reformists at the Legislative elections of February.

What happened at the meeting and the havoc it brought to the reformist and reform process in Iran, the "bundle closure" of almost all reformist and independent publications, imprisonment of a dozen influential journalists and silencing of other outspoken moderate voices etc on order of Ayatollah Khameneh'i, carried out by the Judiciary, is history and and and open secret.

According to well informed German diplomatic sources, it was Mr. Ralf Funks, the Chairman of the Heinrich Boel, an influential and respected member of the Green Party close to the Foreign Minister who urged Mr. Fischer to express Germany's concern about the sentences.

The verdicts provoked dismay in many Western capitals, particularly Germany where all leading German newspapers -- like most dailies in Europe and the US --  opined in their Monday editorials that the sentences were "another blow from the conservatives to the reform movement in Iran" and called on their government to react firmly.

"A sharp deterioration in relations between Iran and the European Union is feared after the Islamic state handed harsh jail sentences to a group of reformists at the weekend", said the London "Independent", adding that the stance is likely to be reflected when the European Union's Middle East working group meets today (Monday), when it will work out an appropriate response to the verdicts.

In Iran itself both newspapers and reformist personalities broke the news black out imposed by the Judiciary.

Commenting on the heavy sentences, Dr. Mohammad Reza Khatami, the Majlis second vice-Speaker and Secretary of the Islamic Iran Participation Party (IIPP), Iran largest political formation close to the President described the verdicts as "undoubtedly unprecedented and being politically motivated"

"Although I do not mean to interfere in the court verdict and one has to accept them as they are, yet I must say that those people who attended the Berlin Conference did not commit a crime and their treatment by the Judiciary was wholly factional and politically motivated," he told the pro-Government English-language daily "Iran News".          

"The countries which maintain diplomatic and political ties with Iran observe certain standards and adhere to certain norms as well," 

"Likewise, we in Iran too, protest the verdicts we consider are issued against Iranians. Therefore, it is our own affair and if there is any flaw, we must ourselves solve the problem", he stressed, according to the official news agency IRNA, the publisher of the daily.                      

First vice-Speaker and an MM (member of the Majles, the Iranian parliament) Mohsen Armin pronounced the verdicts as "unexpected and difficult to accept". "The ten years imprisonment followed by another five years of exile handed down to Mr. Ganji reflects (the Judiciary's) anger and no respect for principles", he said, without emphsising.

Mr. Mohammad Dadfar, another reformist MM was more open in his severe critic of the sentences. Pointing to the "obvious contradictions of the verdicts", he argued that the aim for condemning some of the participants at the conference and the acquittal of others was to sow division among them.

"If participation in the conference is the crime, then none of the participants should have been acquitted and if it is their speeches that constitute the offence, then all of them must be left free, as some of them like Mr. Ganji not only said nothing against the regime but they even defended it", he observed.

He also asked whether the authorities knew that taking part at the meeting was a crime against the Islamic Republic "and if they knew, why they did not warned the participants?, he told the House.

The conservatives say the conference was organised by the German Greens in collaboration with "international Zionist lobbies and the United States" to prepare the ground for the overthrow of the Islamic regime and hence charges of "propaganda against the Islamic Republic, activities against the national security of the State" brought against some of the participants.

But Mrs. Jamileh Kadivar, a Tehran MM who took part at the conference said both the Foreign and Intelligence Ministries were fully aware of the meeting and had at any time made any objection. ENDS IRAN GERMANY SENTENCES 16101