- BERLIN - Iranian Foreign
Minister Kamal Kharazi has told a German newspaper that Israel staged the
capture of a boatload of arms for Palestinian fighters in order to put
pressure on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Kharazi, currently visiting Germany, said in a Die Welt interview to be
published onThursday that Israel had "itself staged" the capture
of the Karine A on January 3 "in order to have a means of putting
pressure on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat".
The entire arms affair was a "constructed story", he said, adding:
"The Israelis are well versed in that." The Karine A was captured
in the Red Sea by a special Israeli commando unit with 50 tonnes of arms
aboard, including Katyusha rockets, destined for delivery to the Palestinian
territories.
Kharazi described US President George W. Bush's remark about Iraq, Iran
and North Korea constituting an "axis of evil" as an "insult
to the Iranian people". He said the choice of words was the pretext
for a "new US doctrine" based upon "unilateralism and a
uni-polar world" and that it should also give the Europeans food for
thought.
The minister repeated his denunciation of US "unilateralism"
to journalists just before talks Wednesday with German Foreign Minister
Joschka Fischer. "If you want to fight terrorism you have to do it
in the United Nations, under international cooperation," he said.
Kharazi and his host were expected to discuss the situations in Afghanistan
and the Middle East, German officials said. Regarding the Saudi initiative
proposing land-for-peace in the Middle East, Kharazi told Die Welt it was
"nothing new" but that interest in such proposals showed "the
despair in the region".
Kharazi on Tuesday met the president of the German parliament, Wolfgang
Thierse, whose Iranian counterpart Mehdi Karubi is to visit Germany on
March 6. The Kharazi visit was sharply criticised by the opposition National
Resistance Council of Iran.
The "clerical terroristic dictatorship" in Tehran has been repeatedly
condemned for human rights violations and was "one of the states most
active in encouraging international terrorism", the council said in
a statement. The minister's visit "means nothing other than praise
for the executioners reigning in Iran"
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- The News International, Pakistan http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2002-daily/28-02-2002/world/w7.htm
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