Iranian Alert -- January 10, 2004 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD --Americans for Regime Change in Iran

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Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail DoctorZin”

The actors in House of Sand and Fog infuse this story of a real-estate war over an auctioned house with a seismic power that goes beyond the writing and the imagery. When your mind objects to the rigging of the plot and a climactic avalanche of melodrama, the performers' intensity and passion still cut you to the quick.

Ben Kingsley plays an immigrant Iranian who was a high-level air force officer in the Shah's regime. In order to support his family in an aptly regal manner, he's been working on a road crew during the day and at a convenience store at night, hiding his employment from the San Francisco Bay Area's upper-crust Iranian enclave.

At the movie's start, he sees the chance to replenish his coffers: He buys, at county auction, a bungalow in a fog-shrouded coastal suburb. He swiftly improves it and prepares to sell it off at more than four times his cost. The problem is, the county had seized the house by mistake. Were it not for the erroneous assessment of a home business tax, the bungalow would indisputably belong to a newly single woman (Jennifer Connelly), who inherited it from her father. But she's a recovering addict who's such an emotional wreck that she's been tossing out tax notices without reading them. Before her lawyer can prevent him, Kingsley makes the property his own.

The high intentions of the original novelist, Andre Dubus III, and the director, Vadim Perelman (who co-wrote the script with Shawn Lawrence Otto), stick out all over all the place. In the book, the anti-heroine constantly refers to Kingsley's character as an Arab; actually, he's Persian. Yet the fight over territory where two people insist on equal ownership and rights inevitably evokes the tensions of the Middle East. And with Kingsley trying to work his new country's system for everything he can get and Connelly as a marginal figure who too easily drops out of that system, House of Sand and Fog also means to uncover the nightmare fringes of the American Dream.

What makes the movie potent, though, has nothing to do with metaphor or parable. It's that the story provides Connelly, Kingsley and Shohreh Aghdashloo as Kingsley's wife with all the tools they need to resurrect, flesh out, revamp and criticize outmoded male and female roles. Connelly turns her forlorn flake into a new-millennium damsel in distress with a bit of femme fatale mixed in. She's a woman who grew up with the idea of liberation but doesn't have the inner resources to make it on her own.

Connelly delivers the film's most daring performance. Unlike those Hollywood flavors of the month who sneak their own glamorous highlights into the most downtrodden characters, Connelly brings out all the shadows and languor of her usually glowing beauty. She creates a woman who insists on her worth even when the sole weapons she can muster against the Iranian are shame and embarrassment.

Her tragedy is that when a married deputy sheriff (Ron Eldard) woos and offers to help her, she gives in too easily to his wants and her romantic fantasies. He aims to be the man in uniform who comes to the rescue. But he's too sloppy and needy - and love makes him reckless. The outcome recalls Nelson Algren's advice, "Never, never, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own."

Ironically, Kingsley is the man in uniform who comes to the rescue, but only for his own family - and only for a while. I think that for this story, the real value of his Persian rituals and discipline is that they underline the romance of patriarchy. And Kingsley goes all the way with it. The unconscious shadings that sneak into this highly conscious actor's best performances are what give them a magnetic vim. In House of Sand and Fog he's at his peak.

Kingsley knows in his bones that without arms deals to secure or troops to command, his character has focused all his force into domestic machismo. His assumption of total parental and marital responsibility is off-putting - also admirable. It includes doing anything to marry off his daughter properly and to prize his teen-age boy's sensitivity and honor while trying to toughen him up.

This husband is simultaneously forbidding and erotic in his air of command. And Aghdashloo plays his wife with exquisite sensuality, compassion and pride. She engages him in alternately violent and subtle struggles over their household's direction, and when they share a moment of ecstasy, their pleasure becomes palpable without soft-core rolling around.

The colonel's tragedy is that he places too much confidence in his capacity to manage events - which, of course, can't extend over volatile people like the woman he displaces and her too-determined-to-prove-himself screw-up of a deputy. Kingsley makes you see the valor of the colonel's masculine urge to control and the pride that comes before a fall worse than anything he could have expected. Into an ending that could have been an unrelieved (and unearned) downer, he breathes the cleansing force of emotional release.

http://www.sunspot.net/features/lifestyle/bal-to.house26dec26,0,3949693.story?coll=bal-artslife-today

I finally had the chance to see this movie, it was an excellent depicition of the average Iranian-American family. I'd have to say that the protrayal of the family was so concise that it reminded me of all surrounding family friends growing up.
Though it tried to separate Persians from Arabs, in one scene Mrs. Aghadashloo even prejudically says 'I did not come to America to work like an Arab', some ignorantly took it to mean that she as an Iranian is an Arab and she came to America to separate herself from her 'Arabism', instead of the fact that she is a Persian and Iranians have had a strong prejudical past with Arabs and see them lower than themselves.

about 3/4th of the theater was crying.. it's extremely sad.. and i hope this opens more doors to Persian culture and heritage and allows more of the reality to sink in..

If you haven't seen it, i hightly recommend it.. bring a shoulder to cry on.

Fall of the Dictators

January 10, 2004
The Straits Times
William Choong

ONE of the world's biggest gatherings of dictators - both past and present - can be found in a private garden in the American state of Texas.

There, a notorious crowd of top names mingles. It includes Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, Romanian despot Nicolae Ceausescu and long-serving Cuban autocrat Fidel Castro.

Owned by Dallas real estate investor Harlan Crow, the statues and busts of such colourful personalities were bought off sculptors or officials as regimes crumbled.

Lenin's statue, for example, was toppled by a Georgian crowd celebrating the end of Moscow's formal control there.

It was found behind a warehouse and was ferried by truck across Georgian and Turkish checkpoints before being shipped to Texas.

'I had to sleep with one eye open for three days, but it was worth it,' Mr Crow told the New York Times.

His growing collection bears out one key fact: For those adept at harassing their citizens and political rivals, stashing away large wads of their countries' hard-earned foreign exchange and building up huge arsenals of banned weapons, dictators had a torrid year in 2003.

The trend is new. For years, dictators got away into relatively tranquil retirement, unfrazzled by trial or retribution.

Nigeria's Ibrahim Babangida, for example, kept enough political power to even avoid the bother of exile.

But in recent years, a confluence of factors has affected tyrants from Baghdad to Tripoli.

Across many countries, there has been a burgeoning of an educated and well-informed middle class which has enjoyed some aid from Western democracies to rout their local despot.

Another push factor has been the growing web of globalisation and democracy. And after the Sept 11 attacks in the US, the American doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against so-called rogue states has yielded significant returns.

Iraq's deposed president Saddam Hussein, for example, bore the brunt of this policy in April last year when his regime fell to US-led forces.

And analysts believe that Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi was all too aware of this policy when he announced the termination of his country's banned weapons programmes last month.

'There's a fear on the part of Gaddafi and North Korea's Kim Jong Il that if they don't change, the US might actually invade,' said Mr Mark Palmer, author of Breaking The Real Axis Of Evil: How To Oust The World's Last Dictators By 2025.

And this is a long-term trend, the veteran US diplomat told The Straits Times.

Since 1974, about 30 of the world's despots - or half the global total - have been toppled.

According to a widely watched annual report by Freedom House last year, a New York-based human rights group, about a quarter of the world's 192 countries were tagged 'not free' - markedly lower than 43 per cent in 1973.

The departure of many big-name dictators, however, would mean a loss of entertainment value - particularly for news hacks.

For years, their notoriety stemmed not only from their clinical efficiency in dispatching their political opponents, but also their quirky and quixotic qualities.

According to Italian journalist Riccardo Orizio, who wrote a book based on hard-won interviews with seven dictators, Ugandan strongman Idi Amin takes the cake.

To Britain's Queen Elizabeth, Amin - nicknamed the 'buffoon tyrant' - offered to send a cargo ship full of bananas to help Uganda's former coloniser with its 'economic problems'.

According to Mr Orizio, Amin once wrote a telex to the Queen saying: 'Dear Liz, if you want to know a real man, come to Kampala.'

Amin - who died in August in Saudi Arabia - was also reported to have expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and kept the severed heads of political opponents in his refrigerator.

In Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov has named some days of the week after himself, including a new name, 'Turkmenbashi', or 'father of all Turkmen'.

A golden profile of the man is also broadcast on a corner of two state television channels at all times.

All said, analysts and diplomats agree that there is much work to be done about the world's remaining dictators.

To some, however, the process of 'domino democratisation' is again happening.

This happened across Eastern Europe in the early 1990s and Latin America in the 1980s.

It is the exact opposite of the 1960s-vintage domino theory put out by American policymakers, which predicted a communist wave engulfing states during the Cold War.

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer has argued that American military force used in Iraq has yielded results across the Middle East.

Besides Libya, Iran has agreed to surprise checks on its nuclear sites while Syria - Israel's arch foe - has made peace overtures.

'The domino effects of the Iraq campaign are already in clear view,' he noted.

Another instrument to bring down dictators would be the full force of international law, said other analysts.

Already, a growing number of leaders have been brought to international tribunals.

They include former Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic, Liberia's Charles Taylor and Jean Kambanda, the Rwandan prime minister jailed for life for genocide.

'The practice of dictatorship should really be considered a crime against humanity,' said Mr Palmer.

There are other more novel ways as well.

Some have proposed the 'fatal hug', where the United States would grant its enemies full diplomatic recognition.

The end-result: This opens the door to the 'insidiously attractive' forces of globalisation and democracy - Coca Cola, Levi's and Big Macs.

This could work in relatively isolated countries like Iran and North Korea, where anti-American rhetoric has been used to mask decades of autocratic rule.

'It would certainly catch the mullahs by surprise,' Iranian dissident Azar Nafisi told Time magazine.

'It would drive them crazy - the thought of having an American embassy in Teheran again, with lines of people around the block, trying to get green cards,' said the fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

An even more innovative way to manage dictators like North Korea's Mr Kim could well be something akin to a Dictators Anonymous.

Mr Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a research institute based in Honolulu, has even suggested that Libya's reformed Mr Gaddafi speak to Mr Kim himself.

Such a form of private diplomacy beats other private initiatives conducted by well-meaning professors, former politicians and diplomats, he argued.

Novel initiatives aside, the year 2003 was probably the only year where so many of the world's most noxious leaders have fallen.

'Unfortunately there are still several dozen well-entrenched dictatorial regimes in the world and I think they will fall only slowly,' Mr Thomas Carothers, a senior associate at Washington's Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Straits Times.

The key problem could lie with the US.

During much of the Cold War, Washington supported oppressive regimes which it used to form a defence against the expansion of the former Soviet Union's communist empire.

Notable examples were Saddam and the Shah of Iran before the revolution of 1979.

Former US president Franklin Roosevelt reportedly said this about murderous Nicaraguan dictator Anatasio Somozo: 'He may be a son of a b***h, but he's our son of a b***h.'

Now, however, a similar trend is occurring - states with dictatorial leaders who are on-side with Washington in its global war against terror have been given lots of latitude.

Take, for example, Ethiopia's ruling People Revolutionary Democratic Front, Uzbek leader Islam Karimov or Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, an army general who toppled an elected government.

And quite often, such dictators clothe themselves with the tools of political legitimacy - democracy. 'They are elected autocrats,' argued former Foreign Affairs editor Fareed Zakaria, referring to leaders such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev.

'Maybe that's the form new dictatorship takes, through leaders who have found a way to use the symbols of legitimacy of the modern age.

'They embrace one element of democracy - elections - and forgo all the others.'

Rogues Gallery

For many decades, the career paths of the world's dictators went from the brutal oppression of citizens and the amassing of great wealth, and then into leisurely retirement. Recently, however, an increasing minority are finding themselves out of a job, in court or in prison.

THE FALLEN ...

Saddam Hussein (1979-2003)

Styling himself as a Arab nationalist, Saddam ruled his people with brutal force and even gassed them. He also led Iraq into three wars in two decades.

He was captured by US forces last month and is awaiting trial.

Slobodan Milosevic (1989-2000)

Milosevic rode a wave of Serbian nationalism to power in 1989 when he was elected President of the Serbian Republic.

But Nato action to stop ethnic cleansing of Kosovo resulted in his capture and removal from power in 2000. He is on trial at the Hague for war crimes.

Idi Amin (1971-1979)

Dubbed the buffoon tyrant, Idi Amin presided over a reign of terror in Uganda during which an estimated 300,000 people died.

He declared himself King of Scotland, banned hippies and mini-skirts, and appeared at a royal Saudi Arabian funeral in 1975 wearing a kilt. He died in August last year.

Charles Taylor (1989-2003)

He came to power after launching a revolt against Liberia's dictator Samuel Doe in 1989. An estimated 200,000 people died before his supporters emerged as the dominant force.

He is accused of masterminding conflicts in West Africa. He lives in exile in Nigeria which, for now, is refusing to extradite him for trial before a UN tribunal.

THE SURVIVORS

Muammar Gaddafi (1969 - )

Hostile towards the West and reportedly a sponsor of terrorism, Colonel Gaddafi rules by decree and denies Libyans a range of basic rights.

With Libya becoming increasingly isolated, however, he has sought to have Libya accepted back into the international community.

Kim Jong-Il (1997 - )

Diplomats and escaped dissidents talk of a vain, paranoid, cognac-guzzling hypochondriac. He is said to wear platform shoes and favour a bouffant hairstyle to appear taller than his 1.57m.

Analysts said such eccentricities could mask the cunning mind of a master manipulator, or betray an irrational madman.

Fidel Castro (1959 - )

Life in Castro's Cuba is essentially controlled by the state, and political dissent is a punishable offence.

He earned the enmity of the US by nationalising US-owned properties and has reputedly survived more than 600 CIA-sponsored attempts on his life.

Sources: BBC, Christian Science Monitor, Newsday

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,4386,229322,00.html

Where are the Ayatollahs?

When I think of the Iranians I think of the people that fought the invading Mongols so well that even in defeat, after Gengis had made mountains of severed Persian heads, Gengis himself said Persians were worthy of respect.

Gengis was a tough audience!!!!

You guys hang in there, things are working out. Keep George Walker Bush President. That is what it takes.

http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_665.shtml

The hardline Muslim regime in Iran is watching uncomfortably as the United States prepares ousted Saddam Hussein. Polling has shown the Iranian people are among the most pro-American in the Middle East. And recent demonstrations reveal that many Iranians want an end to the Islamic government.

In December, it looked to some observers that the end might be near for Iran's Islamic theocracy. But the largest anti-government demonstrations since 1999 sparked a police crackdown and fizzled out. But what has not fizzled is the Iranian people's yearning for radical change, both political and economic. Unemployment is officially at 16 percent but may be as high as 30 percent. Public opinion polls regularly embarrass Iran's anti-American leadership.

In surveys, most Iranians agreed with George W. Bush that their government is part of the "Axis of Evil." In one poll, most Iranians said they wanted better relations with the United States. And despite years of government propaganda, many Iranians love the U.S. But perhaps the biggest problem of all for Iran's Islamic hardliners is demographics. Of Iran's 70 million people, two-thirds are under the age of 30. And half were not alive at the time of Iran's 1979 revolution.

Iran's young people have been called the most serious threat to the future of the Islamic republic. Most want freedom and a higher standard of living, and they do not care about the ideals of the Islamic revolution. Built upon that discontent, a grassroots movement for reform is continuing to spread.

President Khatami, who promised reform but has failed to break the grip of the fundamentalist clerics, has threatened to resign. If he did resign, and that is a big "if," it could trigger public upheaval substantial enough to bring down the entire regime.

Solana: Iran, natural partner of EU

IRIB English News
2004/01/10

Brussels, Jan 10 - Javier Solana, EU high representative for the common foreign and security policy, Friday described the Islamic Republic as an important country with which the EU seeks solid relationship.

"I have been in Tehran on many occasions and I will continue to be, because for us, for Europeans Iran is a natural partner and is an important country and a country ( with which) I hope there will be a solid relationship," said Solana in an exclusive interview with IRNA in Brussels Friday afternoon.

Solana begins an official visit to Tehran on Monday for talks on EU-Iran relations with the Iranian leadership.

"This trip I have a mandate from the leaders of the European Union. We have a dialogue in many fields and I hope there will be a very close relationship. As I said before Iran is a natural partner for the EU," he said.

The EU summit in Brussels in December asked Solana to go to Tehran to lay the ground for further development of relations after Iran signed the additional protocol to the NPT. Solana denied reports in some western media which alleged that he was going to Tehran to put pressure on the Iranian side on issues like human rights, nuclear programme and the Middle East problem.

"Relations with an important country like Iran is based on mutual respect. There are issues that we agree and issues that we disagree. We try to solve all the problems through the mechanism of dialogue and not through any other way," stressed Solana in the interview with IRNA.

Replying to a question on the current EU-Iran relations, Solana said, "We want to have a very natural partnership with Iran. We have many points of contact, dialogue, cooperation, transparency."

Asked when he thought the trade and cooperation negotiations between the EU and Iran would resume, Solana said he cannot give a specific date now.

"It will be something to discuss, to talk. The dialogue will continue to be open in all the fields in which we have a dialogue now."

"I hope that soon we can contribute to the resumption of the negotiations,'' added Solana who is regarded as one of the main proponents of engagement and dialogue between the European bloc and Iran.

EU and Iran have held four rounds of TCA talks which were launched in December 2002.

Solana noted that his visit is taking place "in a very dramatic moment for Iran," referring to the Bam earthquake.

"The Europeans have shown deep sympathy for the tragedy in Bam,"he said.

"I would very much like to visit Bam to show on behalf of the European Union to the people of Bam our support and sympathy and commitment to provide assistance to humanitarian efforts," he said.

http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=196162&n=32

Iran UN Diplomat Warns against Conservatives' Victory in Majles Elections

•“Yet the conservative bloc and its authoritarian fringe — which had seen a succession of devastating defeats from 1997 to 2001 — were emboldened by last year's result and have set their eyes on recapturing the Parliament next month. Should this happen, the immediate result would be that President Khatami's hands would be tied for the rest of his final term of office, which expires in 2005,” member of the Islamic Government's permanent mission to the UN Bagher Asadi, who is a member of the Secretary General's panel on civil societies, writes in the New York Times. (Ali Sajjadi)

•The Guardians Council will disqualify a large number of election candidacy applicants, deputy Majles speaker and influential member of the leftist Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution organization (MIRO) Behzad Nabavi said today. The measure of people's participation in the February 20 Majles elections is the impact of their vote on the country's affairs, he added. In the past, the people's vote has not been honored, and the elected Majles and government had no impact, he added. Observers in Tehran said the interior minister and the Majles speaker did not succeed to get the Supreme Leader's approval to lowering the number of disqualified applicants. Many of the Majles MPs are reportedly among those barred from standing in the upcoming elections. (Nima Tamadon)

http://www.radiofarda.com/transcripts/topstory/2004/01/20040107_2030_0245_0532_EN.asp

40 Percent of Workers Live Below Poverty Line

•More than 40 percent of the country's labor force lives below poverty level, and 60 percent are on the verge of poverty, secretary of the association of workers' Islamic councils Hassan Sadeqi says. The government's minimum wage law has no effect when the inflation is in double digits. (Nima Tamadon)

http://www.radiofarda.com/transcripts/topstory/2004/01/20040107_2030_0245_0532_EN.asp

Top Film Honors

The supporting-actress honor went to Shohreh Aghdashloo for "House of Sand and Fog," and Melissa Leo (news) was runner-up for "21 Grams."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040108/ap_en_mo/film_la_critics_1

I saw that, I thought it was one sick movie!

Almost everyone in that movie made choices which were the wrong ones it seems, with the worst ones made by Connelly and the Cop.

Each failure here was one of selfishness or laziness. If Connelly read her mail she would not have had this problem. If the Cop remembered his oath to his wife, he would not have done what he did.

Even after the house sale, when confronted with the facts, Kingsley should have done the right thing and moved out of the woman's house. He should have offered to sue the city with the woman for a false sale, and BOTH of them make money for the error.

To end the movie the way it did, that was a cowardly way out, also.

I found it to be one of those movies that you just could not take your eyes off of it while watching it, but had to take a bath after.

"for Europeans Iran is a natural partner"

Solana likes to repeat this.....what the heck does it mean? "natural"? That the europeans are tyrants at heart, too?

The mullahs and Mugabe must be included on that list... if Musharaff is included. What a strange article. I'll have to read it again.

Rebuilding Bam Could Cost $1 Billion, Says UN

January 10, 2004
VOA News
AFP and AP

United Nations humanitarian affairs officials say reconstruction costs in the earthquake stricken Iranian city of Bam could reach $1 billion.

U.N. experts said Friday that rebuilding would likely take several years. The majority of the cost will be paid by the Iranian government, but the United Nations will be involved in the planning phase.

As plans get under way to rebuild the devastated city, U.N. officials are dealing with the immediate issue of trying to feed and shelter survivors.

In Rome Friday, the World Food Program launched a three-month emergency operation to feed 100,000 people affected by the Bam earthquake.

The U.N. food agency has allocated nearly $3 million to provide survivors with daily rations of food, including special nutritional crackers. The food aid is meant to help meet their daily needs, so they can try to get on with the monumental task of rebuilding their lives.

More than 30,000 people died in the December 26 quake. Thousands more were injured and most of the city's residents were left homeless.

Some information for this report provided by AFP and AP.

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=BD69C74C-E599-433A-89B4D2CAC61A9690&title=Rebuilding%20Bam%20Could%20Cost%20%241%20Billion%2C%20says%20UN&catOID=45C9C78D-88AD-11D4-A57200A0CC5EE46C&categor

Special Visa Created Just for Well-off from Iran

January 10, 2004
The Sydney Morning Herald
Mike Seccombe

Australia will host foreign guest workers for the first time, after changes to immigration law permitting indentured workers to stay for up to three years.

But the new visa provisions, which came into force on January 1, will allow only a fortunate few Iranians to have "working holidays" here, under conditions far more lenient than those applying to other temporary visitors.

So far, only five have been granted and only three people have arrived in Australia.

The unique provisions arise from a secret memorandum of understanding between Iran and Australia, aimed at reducing the number of asylum seekers.

Under the deal, Iran agreed to accept the return of asylum seekers, and Australia agreed to grant extra visa privileges to well-off, well-educated Iranians.

Under visa subclass 462 such people can apply for up to three consecutive work and holiday visas, and can do so without leaving the country as others do.

They can also, for the first time, apply even if they have dependent children. Usually, working holiday visas are for young, dependent-free tourists to fund extended visits with casual work.

However, the special category appears closer to the concept of guest-worker visas, as used by many other countries.

Details on the Immigration Department website stipulate that to apply for an extension the visa holder must have the "support of their foreign government and of their current employer".

When the Herald sought details from the department, a written response said it was part of "ongoing implementation of the memorandum of understanding with Iran, signed in March 2003".

It said the aim was to help combat illegal immigration, and said it would allow "young Iranians and Australians to work and holiday in each others' countries".

The Foreign Affairs website warns that visiting Iran carries risks, including from terrorist attacks, battles between security forces and drug lords, corrupt officialdom, and dying in an air crash aboard the country's aged aircraft.

A spokesman for the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, said yesterday it was "completely wrong" to categorise the holders of such visas as guest workers, because the category was restricted to the tertiary qualified.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/09/1073437469428.html

US: Iran Must Address Freedom, Nuclear Capability

January 10, 2004
AFP
TerraNet

Iran must improve democratic rights and come clean about its nuclear assets, the US Department of State said.

The department also said US engagement with Iran would come "if and when" President George W. Bush determines the time is ripe.

Analysts had thought US aid to earthquake victims in Bam, southern Iran might open a door to rapprochement, but US officials said Iran is still developing nuclear weapons and hampering democracy.

"Our policy has been to engage Iran on specific issues of concern in an appropriate manner if and when the president determines he wants to do so," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"I don't want to speculate at this point of whether there might be such discussions again but we do think these issues need to be addressed," Boucher told reporters.

Boucher said Washington continues to have "issues with Iran."

"Issues like the voices of people in Iran that look for more freedom, issues like al-Qaeda members who are in Iran, issues like Iran's nuclear program, which needs to be resolved in a satisfactory manner consistent with Iran's promises and commitments to the international community," Boucher said.

He said the two countries had broached some of these issues, alluding to secretive US-Iranian diplomatic talks in Geneva last May.

However, Iran's former president said Friday that it was time for the United States to put such "accusations" behind it.

The Islamic republic's former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said the United States must stop making accusations against Iran if it wants to open a new page in relations with Tehran.

"If the United States wants to extend the hand of friendship and turn a new page, they should stop repeating past accusations (against Iran) which are totally false," Rafsanjani said at weekly Friday prayers in the Iranian capital.

The two countries broke off relations in 1980 following the Islamic revolution that deposed the Shah of Iran. Bush has described Iran as part of the "axis of evil."

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, said Thursday that US humanitarian aid for the victims of the Bam earthquake had not improved relations, saying Washington continues to show "basic hostility" toward Iran.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, on Thursday, seemed more upbeat on diplomatic prospects following the dispatch of US aid to the quake zone.

"This is not a political breakthrough, but it was nevertheless a human breakthrough ... so we will see what happens in the future with respect to our relationship with Iran," Powell said.

http://www.terra.net.lb/wp/Articles/DesktopArticle.aspx?articleId=130822&channelId=4

US: Iran Must Address Freedom, Nuclear Capability

January 10, 2004
AFP
TerraNet

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1055200/posts?page=18#18

He said the two countries had broached some of these issues, alluding to secretive US-Iranian diplomatic talks in Geneva last May.

Is there any further information about these talks?