Iran and Iraq have served as corridors for al-Qaeda fighters going home to Arab states from Afghanistan, and Iran has sheltered some members of this terrorist organization, U.S. officials said Friday.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, briefing reporters Friday, accused Iran's government of helping terrorists fleeing the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
"Iran had served as a haven for some terrorists leaving Afghanistan," he said. "It is also true it has permitted the transit of terrorists, and the supporters of terrorists, through Iran."
Rumsfeld said Iran has worked with Syria to move materials and people into Damascus and then into the hands of groups involved with “terrorist” activities in Lebanon and Israel.
Iran concerns the United States because of its work in developing weapons of mass destruction and missiles to deliver them. "Iran is an important country," Rumsfeld said. "It has a population that's educated and industrious and, in many respects, repressed by the leadership of that country."
The inclusion of Iran as a member of the "Axis of Evil" in President Bush's State of the Union speech in January, he said, was an attempt to highlight the danger Iran presents.
Some of those allowed to stay in Iran include an al-Qaida leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian accused of helping plot a bombing at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman aimed at killing Americans and Israeli tourists during millennial celebrations, a U.S. official has said, according to AP.
In 1999, Jordanian authorities broke up that hotel bombing plot. Zarqawi, who has used the alias Ahmad Fadeel al-Khalayleh, went from Afghanistan to Iran not long after the U.S. war in Afghanistan began last October, and he later left, U.S. officials have said. His current whereabouts are unclear. Iran has rejected allegations that it is tied to the those fleeing Afghanistan.
Some small groups of al-Qaeda have also crossed Iran and Iraq, but not to stay. Instead, U.S. officials say they returned to their home countries on the Arabian peninsula and elsewhere.
One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity Friday, said there's no evidence that any al-Qaeda members have set up a base of operations in Iraq. Nor does the United States have any evidence of Iraqi complicity in the terrorists' using Iraq as a transit corridor to return to their home countries, the official said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
