Posted on 05/23/2004 5:35:38 AM PDT by Grampa Dave
Edited on 05/23/2004 5:56:00 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran acknowledged Sunday it had a strong dialogue with embattled Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, but rejected accusations that he passed classified intelligence to Iran.
Chalabi's long-standing contacts with Iran have left some in the U.S. government suspicious about his intentions. Chalabi has denied allegations he handed over sensitive information to Iran about the U.S. occupation.
His home and offices were raided by Iraqi police backed by American soldiers on Friday, and Chalabi is now mbroiled in a public battle with the U.S.-run occupation authority. He has become a harsh critic of Washington's Iraq policies.
"We had continuous and permanent dialogue with Chalabi and other members of the Iraqi Governing Council," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said at a press conference. "But spying charges are unfounded and baseless. It's not true at all."
"We didn't receive any confidential information from Chalabi or any other member of the Iraqi Governing Council," Asefi said.
American allegations against Chalabi, he said, were an attempt to shift attention from the scandal surrounding the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and Washington's increasing problems in Iraq.
"To overshadow its increasing problems in Iraq and get rid of pressures resulting from the prisoner abuse scandal ... the U.S. is making false accusations," Asefi said.
"In the past months, Americans have said many lies and failed to come up with evidence for their allegations," he said, apparently referring to U.S. accusations that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, a charge Washington failed to prove.
Asefi also said that Iran has sent a "warning" message to the United States through the Swiss Embassy concerning Washington's actions in Iraq. In the absence of formal diplomatic relations between the two countries, Switzerland looks after American interests in Iran.
"The message is one of warning," Asefi said without providing any details. He was responding to a question about whether Iran had sent a message to the United States to protest its policy in neighboring Iraq including damage to Shiite holy shrines there.
Chalabi once was being groomed by the United States as a possible successor to Saddam. However, the U.S. State Department did not share the Pentagon's enthusiasm for him, and Chalabi became a liability after no significant weapons of mass destruction were found in post-war Iraq.
Such weapons were cited by the United States and Britain as the primary justification for the Iraq war, and Chalabi's network of Iraqi exiles in the Iraqi National Congress had provided the Bush administration intelligence reports of their existence.
On Saturday, a senior Iraqi official alleged that Chalabi's security chief, Araz Habib, was wanted by Iraqi and coalition authorities for alleged links to Iran's intelligence service.
Habib, a Shiite Kurd, was being sought under an arrest warrant because "he has relations with the Iranian government" and "works for the Iranian intelligence," the official said in Baghdad on condition of anonymity. Chalabi has defended his aide.
Iran maintains close ties with a variety of Iraqi groups, including Iraq's largest Shiite Muslim group, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, and the two powerful Kurdish groups controlling northern Iraq, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
All three groups, whose leaders sit in the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, have offices in Tehran. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress is believed to have had an office in Tehran until last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.tbo.com ...
Ah.....ok. thanx
Oh, okay, thanks. That certainly clears that up.
Our bad, sorry.
We all need to apologize to the peace loving mass murdering mullahs in charge of Iran!
Yeah sure!
PINGED YOU ON GRAMPA'S REQUEST!
Thanks Dave!
We are winning ~ the bad guys are losing ~ trolls, terrorists, democrats and the mainstream media are sad ~ very sad!
I guess we have to watch the events in the coming months. June/July might be the right time for Iranian students to rise against the regime in Iran!
Given the current state of the Lame Stream Media we on FR will get the truth first.
I'm not sure what to believe here since I trust NONE of the people involved.
Iran bought out Jimmy Carter???
http://rescueattempt.tripod.com/hostagerescueattempt/id24.html
Great documentation on the worse president of the last century.
When all of the data gets in, we will see how he enabled the Mass Murdering Mullahs to take over Iran. Then he deballed the CIA and our military.
If Jimmy had been elected for the second term instead of President Reagan, we would be speaking Russian and some Arabic language if we were alive.
Is that documentation on your home page or do you have links to it via your home page?
Thanks again!
Iran probably okayed their recent Iraqi action when their buddy al Querry sent those emails to them asking for money and support.
"I'm not sure what to believe here since I trust NONE of the people involved."
That is the right attitude to have as news and spin pretending to be news comes out about Chalabi, Iran and Iraq.
We will see more butt covering as this Chalabi mess unfolds from the left and the right.
If there is a sudden decrease in Iranian controlled violence in Iraq, we know that they got caught again.
It contains some very interesting information.
Interesting.
You know where Hizbollah get's it's money....Iran.
This is why I have never worried about an Islamic state in Iraq. The Iraqis have had a front row seat to see the fruits of a country ruled by clerics and they want no part of it. They see the poverty and the fear the Iranians are living and if they had any doubts before, Sadar has erased it.
The other problem is, how do you hand over soverignty to people who will be unable to exercise any power. We are handing over the power to the individual ministers who will have the powers granted by the interim constitution to guide them, but Chalabi keeps howling for the military to be handed over. I think that would be a mistake until there is an elected government to control them. The possibility of a strongman stepping forward and taking power via military coup is just too great.
I think President Bush needs to address the Iraqi people and explain why this won't be done until THEY choose their leaders.
Well thats good enough for Chris Mathews.
Why do you say this? Chalabi is not even charged with anything.
Chalabi cultivated his contacts with Iran at the behest of the CIA. Now they want to use that against him? The CIA pushed out Chalabi in 1995, of at the behest of the King of Jordan, and the same British intelligence that engineered the downfall of the Shah! Now more info from Jordan implicates Chalabi?
It's obvious that King Hussein is orchestrating all this. He doesn't want a Shiite businessman to be leader of Iraq because his own family has a claim to the throne. He doesn't want anything to interfere with th UN takeover of Iraq by the Sunni anti-Zionist, Lackey Brahimi. Do you really think it's a coincidence this happened just days after Chalabi refused stop his UN Oil for Food investigation?
[Carter's] mistaken assessment of Khomeini was encouraged by advisors with a desire to form an Islamic green belt to contain atheist Soviet expansion with the religious fervor of Islam. Eventually all 30 of the scenarios on Iran presented to Carter by his intelligence agencies proved wrong, and totally misjudged Khomeini as a person and as a political entity.
Afghanistan comes to mind. So does Indonesia, just 15 years earlier.
In any case, I'd like to see hard documentation for Carter's involvement in the Bandar Mahshahr complex scandal. Does the discredited Gary Sick offer us anything in October Surprise about it? What about his work All Fall Down : America's Tragic Encounter With Iran?
Iranian Voice has an article by Chuck Morse called Carter Sold Out Iran 1977-1978, but he provides few specifics.
I'd also like more information on Carter's alleged approach to the KGB in his all-out effort to defeat Ronald Reagan.
It's equally interesting to note that the American left uses these same events and the Iran Contra affair against the Reagan presidency.
America is always going to be in the balance.
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