Iranian officials recently refused to meet a special envoy from former Afghan monarch Mohammed Zahir Shah because it would "weaken" the opposition Northern Alliance, the centrist Entekhab paper reported Monday.
"This information circulated in parliament's hallways Sunday," the daily said, adding that Zahir Shah's envoy had requested a meeting with "high-ranking" Iranian officials."
However, Iran's National Security Council, charged with national defense matters and headed by moderate President Mohammad Khatami, "refused to accept the request because accepting it would weaken the Northern Alliance," the paper said.
On Sunday, Khatami called for "free and general elections" in neighbouring Afghanistan, whose Taliban regime is the target of US-led military attacks for sheltering Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
"We hope for an increased role of the United Nations in this crisis in order to plan the organisation of free general elections as well as the formation of a coalition government comprising all the parties," Khatami said in a telephone conversation with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Iran was swift to condemn the anti-US terror attacks but is also opposed to the US-led attacks on Afghanistan, a fellow Muslim country, with which it shares a 900-kilometer (560-mile) border.
Instead Tehran, which detests the Taliban and recognises the ousted Afghan government linked to the Northern Aliance, demands that the international campaign against terrorism be led by the UN -- Tehran, (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
