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To Woo the French, Iran Rolls Out its Carpets

February 04, 2004
The New York Times
Elaine Sciolino

PARIS -- At Friday prayers in Tehran late last month, 150 Iranian female members of Iran's volunteer militia chanted "Death to France" to protest an anticipated French law banning religious symbols, including Muslim headscarves, from public schools.

The "hand of Satan" could be seen in France's decision, a declaration read out at the end of the protest stated.

But in Paris last month, Iran used carpet diplomacy to show a softer side, exhibiting 159 hand-knotted, state-of-the-art carpets to demonstrate the depth and regional diversity of the country's centuries-old carpet industry.

The exhibition coincided with an official visit by Mohammad Shariatmadari, the Minister of Commerce and several dozen Iranian businessmen. So perhaps it should not have been surprising that most of the carpets were both for show and for sale.

"You could spend a month in Iran and not see carpets like this," said Mohammad Sadegh Kharazi, Iran's 40-year-old ambassador to France, who claimed that never before in the history of Iran's 25-year Islamic Republic had such a show been organized. "I bought three of them myself on the first night," for more than $100,000, he added.

M.R. Behzadian, President of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, who came to Paris to drum up investment from French corporations, also struggled to stress the artistic. "Art," Behazadian said, "is more important than business."

At about $600 million a year, carpets remain Iran's top non-oil export, according to Commerce Ministry figures. So the exhibition was a welcome showcase for the seven carpet dealers, all approved by the ministry, who participated in the exhibition.

Yet Iran has been struggling without much success to regain its market share in the face of stiff competition in recent years from other countries, particularly China, India, Nepal and Pakistan, which have copied traditional Persian designs.

It was Kharazi who pulled together the sale in one of the choicest exhibition spots in Paris. An English speaker with a master's degree in political science from New York University, he has used much of his 16-month tenure here to campaign for both his country's cultural heritage and its business potential. He dispenses French translations of "The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam," velvet-boxed CD collections of traditional Iranian music and packets of saffron to visitors, even as he brags that only Germany is a bigger European trading partner with Iran.

This month, with the blessing of Unesco and the French Ministry of Culture, he is acting as host for an Iranian classical theater and music production at the headquarters of UN cultural organization in Paris to raise money for the survivors of the recent earthquake than leveled the historic Iranian city of Bam, leaving 30,000 people dead.

"I am sponsoring everything - the food, the hotel, the transportation, the rental of the salon," said Kharazi, at a cost, he estimated, of about $250,000.

But it is Kharazi's extraordinary pedigree that has helped make him one of Iran's most well-placed Iranian ambassadors around the world. He is both the son of Ayatollah Mohsen Kharrazi, who sits on the influential Assembly of Experts, and the nephew of Iran's Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharazi.

Carpet creations in Iran run the gamut - from rough picnic coverings woven in wool by tribal women and traditionally placed on the ground at mealtime to densely-knotted fine silk carpets that are never walked on and whose colors move with the light.

The centerpiece of the carpet exhibition, which was held at the domed Bourse de Commerce hall in the heart of Paris, was a silk and wool carpet commissioned by the 20th century monarch Reza Shah and made by Amu Oghli, one of the master carpet weavers of Mashhad who produced many carpets for the king.

Although independent carpet dealers in Paris who have seen the exhibition said that the carpets are priced competitively, only 14 were sold, according to an Iranian official at the embassy. (In the first 11 months of 2003, France imported only $11 million worth of Iranian carpets and woven textiles such as kilims.)

The relaxation of U.S. sanctions on Iran in 2000 did not dramatically bolster the market in the United States, although Iranian carpet dealers still lavish praise on Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, for pushing through the measure.

"We presented Mrs. Albright with a small carpet with her portrait woven on it," said Razi Miri, managing director of Miri Iranian Rugs, whose family has been in the carpet business in Iran for five generations, and whose carpets are on display in the exhibition. "Her face looked very natural. She was very happy to receive it."

http://www.iht.com/articles/127921.html

Pakistan's Military Faces Scrutiny After Nuclear Secrets Leaks

Tue Feb 3

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Attempts to prosecute the disgraced father of Pakistan's nuclear program Abdul Qadeer Khan for selling nuclear secrets could backfire by placing the military's alleged role under scrutiny, analysts have warned.

Khan confessed in an 11-page statement at the weekend to selling nuclear expertise to Iran, Libya and North Korea from 1988 to at least 1997, according to the government.

The government is now weighing up whether to prosecute Khan, one of Pakistan's most revered national heroes. It has already sacked him as special adviser on strategic affairs.

But analysts like Riffat Hussain, head of the Strategic Studies Department at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University, said trying Khan would open a "Pandora's box."

"Pushed to the wall A.Q. Khan can spill the beans, which can complicate matters -- especially Islamabad's claims that technology leakage was done without official sanction," Hussain said.

Khan's daughter left Pakistan last month carrying a cassette recording of Khan "in which he defends himself and levels charges against certain people," The News daily reported Monday.

It said officials were trying to retrieve the tape "fearing it might damage the country if it fell into the hands of the anti-Pakistan lobby."

In his statement Khan accused former army chiefs Aslam Beg and Jehangir Karamat of "indirectly instructing" him to proliferate, a senior military official told AFP.

"He named two gentlemen, (retired) generals Beg and Karamat, who were then questioned," the official said, requesting anonymity.

Beg, who denied in interviews last week approving or being aware that nuclear secrets were being sold off, was army chief from 1988 to 1991, and Karamat was army chief until 1998.

"(Khan) said they were in the know. In one case he said he did it on their instructions, but not directly. They asked someone else and that fellow instructed A.Q. Khan and that man is now dead."

The middleman was the late brigadier Imtiaz, defence adviser to Benazir Bhutto during her first tenure as prime minister from 1988 to 1990.

"There was no evidence found of what A.Q. Khan was saying, so it could not be sustained," the official said.

But Beg and Karamat were questioned thoroughly, he added.

"If there is any more evidence of involvement of anyone else they will be questioned, no one is above the law."

President Pervez Musharraf has adamantly denied that the military or former governments encouraged or approved the transfers of nuclear technology and expertise, blaming civilian scientists and the world black market.

Pakistan's military was "not at all" concerned about possible scrutiny if Khan is put to trial, the military official said.

"The military is keen to put the house in order, if at all someone is involved he must be taken to task and the house must be put in order."

Officials also insist that no proliferation occurred after 2000, when the military established the National Command Authority (NCA) and command and control structures to secure the country's nuclear program.

"Certainly nothing happened after the NCA was established in 2000," a government official told AFP Monday.

But observers are sceptical that Khan could have proliferated so widely without military approval.

"What is rather clear to me is that it was not just personal profit that was involved, nor was the action of mere individuals possible," Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physics professor who campaigns for nuclear disarmament, told AFP.

"Rather it has to be something much deeper than that and which involved state apparatus, because the transfer of such materials is impossible without explicit permission from the security apparatus that constantly surrounds the nuclear establishment, installations and personnel."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040203/wl_afp/pakistan_nuclear_040203063905

DEATH AND DUTY-FREE ON THE ROAD TO MECCA

by Amir Taheri
Wall Street Journal
February 3, 2004

As this year's Hajj pilgrimage ends, Muslims leaders need to re-examine a rite in the exercise of which 244 people were trampled to death last Sunday. This was not the first time that Mecca pilgrims have died in big numbers. Some 6,000 pilgrims have died, many in violent incidents, during the Hajj in and around Mecca since 1980.

Unlike the five daily prayers and the month of fasting at Ramadan, the Hajj is not a mandatory obligation on all Muslims. Only those who can prove that they are musta'tee (solvent) are expected to perform it.

To qualify as musta'tee an individual would have to fulfill a number of conditions. He must be well-to-do, though not necessarily wealthy, have no debts, be sure that he can provide for the subsistence of his family for a year, and be in robust health. More importantly he must be free of "the burden of sins" for which he has not repented and/or made amends. Before leaving for the pilgrimage he must also make sure that seven of his neighbors in each of the four directions from his house are cared for and not in dire straits.

Now, however, anyone who can afford the fare to Mecca can apply to become a pilgrim. The number of pilgrims has risen from an estimated 82,000 in 1954 to over two million this year. Many go to Mecca to profit from tax-free shops that sell Western luxury goods often unavailable in other Muslim countries. Each Hajj season, the business generates some $4.5 billion for Mecca and Medina.

In the 1980s the Saudi authorities imposed quotas to limit the number of pilgrims to around two million. This created a black market for places in the waiting lists established by Muslim governments. In Iran, for example, the wait could take 12 years. Thus some people register as candidates for the pilgrimage and then sell their turn to others, for up to $10,000.

In recent years dying in Mecca has emerged as a fashion among some Muslims. Old and terminally ill people are persuaded by their mullahs that anyone who dies in Mecca will go straight to paradise. (This week there were 272 such deaths.) This, of course, is in violation of the rules for the pilgrimage.

There is worse. Many people, especially from Southeast Asia and Africa, use the Hajj as a cover for entering Saudi Arabia as illegal immigrants. The Saudi Interior Ministry estimates the number of these "stay-behinds" at over one million since 1980.

The pilgrimage is also a cover for drug smuggling. According to Saudi estimates, 70% of drugs brought into the kingdom is smuggled during the Hajj when customs officials are physically incapable of checking every arrival.

Militants have also used the Hajj to spread their hate messages, raise funds, and recruit terrorists and "martyrs." In 1979 a group of terrorists seized control of the Kaaba and fought a week-long gun-battle with the security forces. Over 1000 people, including pilgrims caught in the crossfire, perished. In 1987 Ayatollah Khomeini dispatched a battalion of his Revolutionary Guards dressed up as mullahs to Mecca, where they clashed with the Saudi National Guard. Hundreds, mostly pilgrims, died.

There are no official figures, but the number of those queuing up to go to Mecca is estimated at 130 million, or 1% of the world's total Muslim population. With the current ceiling it would take 65 years before all those on the waiting list can realize their dream. Although most Muslim economies are either stagnant or in decline, experts believe that by the year 2020, the number of candidates for Hajj could top 300 million.

So what is to be done? Part of the answer was given by the late Tunku Abdul-Rahman, who gave up his position as Malaysia's prime minister to head the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1970. In 1971 he created a commission to review the Hajj, among other issues of contemporary Islam. The commission made a number of proposals.

The first was to impose rules to establish who is qualified to become a pilgrim. The estimate at the time was that 60% of those who did Hajj each year lacked the qualifications demanded by the Islamic canon.

The second proposal was to revive the tradition of substitution, under which believers who qualify for Hajj could donate the cost of the journey to charity and stay at home while benefiting from the blessings that the pilgrimage is supposed to bestow. Similarly, the commission proposed that rather than killing millions of sheep and camels on a single day and then burying their carcasses in the deserts around Mecca, the pilgrims should give the money to the hungry poor in their homelands.

The third proposal was more revolutionary -- to spread the pilgrimage from a single day in the lunar month of Dhul-Hajja to all its 29 days so that smaller numbers of pilgrims could perform the rites at any given time. At present, few pilgrims have any chance of even seeing the central shrine of Islam, the Kaaba, let alone touching it, as a two-million-strong crowd moves around it on a single day.

The proposals were pushed aside by Muslim political leaders fearful of the mullahs, the muftis and the then newly emerging fundamentalist militant groups. It is time to revive some of those ideas and go further. The pilgrimage could be spread throughout the 365 days of each solar calendar year. The reason is that the supposedly fixed Hajj date is not fixed at all. The calendar in use is a lunar one in which a year is nine days short of the solar year. Every 10 years the season in which Hajj takes place changes. And in a time-span of just over 40 years all the 365 days of the solar calendar would have coincided with the culminating point of the Hajj.

To Muslim fundamentalists the issue of Hajj is taboo, never to be discussed except in flattering terms. But this was not always the case. Three decades ago Islam was not as closed, as frightened of self-examination, as it is today. There is no reason that today's Muslims should not review all aspects of the rite, not only to avoid further tragedies but also to make sure it is not sued as a cover for political propaganda, terrorist recruitment, drug smuggling and human trafficking.

Over 1,000 years ago the Persian poet Nasser Khosrow hailed a visit to the Kaaba as "seeing a new life." Unless urgent reforms are carried out, for many Muslims, the pilgrimage could mean seeing violent death.

Mr. Taheri is author of 10 books on the Middle East and the Islamic world.

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/1658