RUSSIA WANTS IRAN NOT COOPERATING WITH AMERICA ON IRAQ
Moscow, 13 Jan. (IPS) Russia has urged the Islamic Republic not to cooperate with the United States in case it attacks Iraq, informed sources said at the end of the first rounds of talks between visiting Iranian Deputy Foreign Affaires Minister Mohsen Amizadeh with his Russian counterpart Vyacheslav Trubnikov.
Mr. Aminzadeh, in charge of Asian and Oceania affairs, arrived in Moscow Sunday evening and met Mr. Trubnikov on Monday.
"The ambivalence of Iranian policy over Iraq and the possibility of Tehran cooperating with Washington to topple Saddam Hoseyn preoccupies Moscow", a diplomatic source said, referring to recent press reports that several canals have been established between Iran and the United States concerning the Iraqi crisis.
"Russia is concerned about Iran-US cooperation in the likelihood of an American attack on Iraq and wants to make sure that Tehran would not oblige, no matter pressures Washington could put on Tehran", an informed journalist in Moscow said.
Officially, the Islamic Republic is against any single handed attack by the United States on Iraq and Mr. Hamid Reza Asefi, the senior spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry reiterated that line right before the departure of Mr. Aminzadeh for Moscow.
But at the same time, Iran has assured Iraqi forces opposed to Mr. Hoseyn, particularly the Kurds and the Shi’a, that it would not oppose them joining American forces using Iranian territory.
Like France and China, Russia is against American-led attack on Iraq without any prior green light from the United Nations and to prevent the war, it is urging the Iraqi dictator to leave Baghdad.
Some western media have speculated that Mr. Yevgeny Primakov, the former Soviet Premier and Foreign Affairs Minister under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, who is one of the best expert on Iraq, has offered Mr. Hoseyn sanctuary in Russia.
Mr. Jajal Talebani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of (Iraqi) Kurdistan confirmed last week in Tehran that he had assured Iranian authorities that the United States was ready to give any security guarantees to Iran against probable consequences of an American attack on Iraq.
"American officials asked me to tell Iranians that the United States had no bad intention against Iran in the Iraqi crisis", he said, quoted by the official Iranian news agency IRNA.
"Americans say they will take no action against Iran and that they are ready to give any guarantee which Iran wants", the visiting Kurdish leader told reporters in Tehran in an effort to appease Iranian authorities’ fear of being the next on the American list of Middle East nations to be changed.
In an interview with the Persian service of Radio France Intrernational (RFI), Mr. Talebani said in his view, the positions of Iran and the United States on Iraq have "converged" recently.
In an exclusive interview with IRNA at the end of his meeting with Mr. Aminzadeh, Mr. Trubnikov said the two sides discussed mutual cooperation on campaign against international terrorism, drug trafficking and extremism, as well as regional issues, including Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Russia views Iran as an "important regional partner" that is ready to "play a key role in consolidating regional stability and security", he added, eexpressing satisfaction over the joint stance taken by Iran and Russia to safeguard peace and stability in the region, as well as disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation, and exports control.
Russia has a very strong political will to further strengthen cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran, he said, referring to the two countries collaboration in the construction of a controversial nuclear power plant in the Iranian port of Booshehr, on the Persian Gulf.
The one billion US Dollar project, to be finished this year with the necessary technology sold to Iran by Russia, is at the heart of a bitter dispute between Washington and Tel-Aviv insisting in the one hand that the plant would serve Iran to build nuclear bomb, Moscow and Tehran rejecting the claim on the other.
Iran, with Iraq and North Korea, has been described by the United States as making up an "axis of evil".
Trubnikov said that Russian officials believed the US view of Iran lacked
firm foundations, noting that the two countries maintained a political dialogue
and that Moscow took a positive view of Teheran's cooperation in international
and regional affairs. ENDS IRAN RUSSIA TALKS 13103