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Iraq president Jalal Talabani demands US
free detained Iranian
23.9.2007
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September 23, 2007
BAGHDAD, --Iraqi President Jalal Talabani
demanded the immediate release on Saturday of an
Iranian detained by the US military, after Iran's
ambassador said the arrest called into question
Iraq's sovereignty.
Talabani said the Iranian seized from a hotel in
northern Iraq last Thursday was a civilian official
who had been visiting with the blessing of both the
Kurdish regional government and the authorities in
Baghdad.
In a statement addressed to the top US officials in
Iraq, General David Petraeus and ambassador Ryan
Crocker, he said: "I am informing you of our
displeasure over the arrest of the Iranian civilian
official without consulting the government of
Kurdistan.
"That is a humiliation for the regional
administration," said Talabani, who is himself a
Kurd. |
Iraqi President : Jalal Talabani, a Kurd
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"You ignored our authority. I ask for his immediate
release in order to maintain healthy relations
between Iran and Kurdistan and for the prosperity of
Kurdistan."
The US military seized Mahmudi Farhadi from a hotel
in Iraq's northern Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah
on Thursday, charging that he was an officer in the
covert operations arm of Iran's elite Revolutionary
Guards.
But Talabani insisted the detainee was an official
on a "commercial mission with the knowledge of the
federal government in Baghdad and the government of
Kurdistan."
He said the arrest had triggered an angry reaction
from Tehran which has "threatened to close its
border with the Kurdistan region if Mahmudi Farhadi,
a civilian employee of Kermanshah (province in
western Iran) is not released".
"This will handicap trade in the Kurdish region in
this blessed month," he added in reference to
Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar.
The US military insists that the man they detained
is Quds Force officer, saying they used a photograph
to identify him.
Both Iran and the Kurdish regional government have
said that he was part of a visiting business
delegation and Iranian ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi
accused the US military of riding roughshod over
Iraq's sovereignty.
"The Iraqi government must secure the release of the
Iranian," Kazemi Qomi said in an interview Saturday.
"This kind of action violates the sovereignty of
Iraq," the ambassador said. "This is an example of
American mistakes in Iraq."
Kazemi Qomi roundly rejected US accusations that
Iran was undermining its neighbour's security
insisting that, compared with Iraq's borders with US
allies Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the frontier with
Iran was a model of security.
The ambassador said the Iraqi government simply did
not believe US accusations that Iran was fomenting
unrest.
"How many Iranians accused of terrorism are in the
prisons?" he asked, suggesting that no nationals had
been been convicted of involvement in the violence
wracking Iraq.
"And how many are from countries considered friendly
by the United States?" he added, in allusion to US
regional allies Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi
Arabia.
Both US and Iraqi figures show that the majority of
foreign fighters in Iraq come from those countries,
along with Iran's regional ally Syria.
The US military is continuing to hold five Iranians
it detained in the northern Kurdish city of Erbil in
January on suspicion of aiding insurgents.
But the five have never been charged and Iran
insists they are diplomats.
The US military also briefly detained eight
Iranians, including two diplomats, from a Baghdad
hotel last month.
But it later released them following protests from
the Iraqi government in what it described as a
"regrettable incident."
Kazemi Qomi brushed aside US accusations that his
government was seeking to destabilise Iraq,
insisting the border with Iran was Iraq's "safest".
"Iraq is an occupied country and the occupation
brought terrorism into Iraq. America opened the
borders and gave an opportunity to terrorists to
enter Iraq and to criminals of the past regime to
return," he said.
AFP
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