Associated Press
12 May 03
By BARRY SCHWEID

CAIRO, Egypt – The United States and Iran held several meetings in Geneva, Switzerland, in an effort to ease friction between the two countries, a senior U.S. official said Monday.

The meetings focused on a wide range of issues, including postwar Iraq, in which the Bush administration is attempting to deter Iran from trying to influence the formation of a new government in Baghdad.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, during a news conference here after a meeting with Egyptian officials, said the administration opposes a fundamentalist regime as not being in the interest of the Iraqi people.

Powell echoed a similar statement weeks ago by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said establishment of an Iranian-style fundamentalist government would be unacceptable to the United States.

The official, who spoke condition on anonymity, said the meetings in Geneva were technically under the auspices of the United Nations.

USA Today, reporting on the talks in Monday’s editions, said the government of Iran was weighing the possibility of reopening diplomatic relations with the United States for the first time in nearly a quarter century.

The official Iranian news agency on Monday quoted Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi saying the discussions were about the work in Afghanistan and were conducted through the auspices of the Swiss Embassy in Tehran.

“During these negotiations, the issue of bilateral relations was not on the agenda and no negotiations were held in that regard,” he was quoted as saying by the IRNA news agency in Tehran.

Powell, on a flight Saturday to the Middle East, said the United States has long been in communication with Iran through various channels.

However, he said at the time that the administration was not trying to restore diplomatic relations with Tehran, which were broken off in 1979, when militants overran the U.S. embassy and took dozens of Americans as hostages.

Bush Administration Divided on How to Resolve Renewed Tensions Over Iraq, Nuclear Plans
The Wall Street Journal
May 12, 2003
By DAVID S. CLOUD

When the Bush administration this month asked the Iranian government through intermediaries to turn over Iraqi officials or terrorists who crossed into their territory, a U.S. official says Tehran’s reply was caustic: We had a deal to cooperate, and you haven’t lived up to it.

The Iranians were upset that Washington hadn’t followed through on prewar assurances that coalition forces invading Iraq would eliminate the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, an anti-Tehran militia group that for years has mounted cross-border attacks from Iraq.

The back-channel messages, which the official said were conveyed by British diplomats, show how a relationship that in some ways had been quietly improving after the war in Afghanistan has deteriorated since the invasion of Iraq. Now, U.S. officials accuse Tehran of sending agents to foment anti-U.S. sentiment among Iraq’s Shiite Muslims, continuing to back anti-Israel terror groups and stepping up a clandestine nuclear-weapons program.

How the U.S. — with thousands of troops on Iran’s western flank — confronts these issues has become a major foreign-policy question for the Bush administration. And the issue has revived an internal U.S. government debate about how to deal with Iran , a country the U.S. hasn’t had formal relations with since Islamic clerics took power in a 1979 revolution.

Some State Department officials argue that the best way to improve Tehran’s behavior, in addition to public pressure, is to quietly signal to people loyal to President Mohammad Khatami that Washington’s goals in the region don’t include the regime’s ouster. If the Iranians don’t feel threatened, these officials argue, they will be less apt to meddle in Iraq and may even decide that developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles is less urgent.

That view isn’t shared by other administration officials. Some in the Pentagon and White House favor a more confrontational approach, based on their view that Iran’s hard-line clerics retain too much authority to abandon policies objectionable to Washington without sustained pressure. They argue for steps aimed at destabilizing the Iranian regime from within, including a proposed $50 million fund for pro-democracy radio and satellite broadcasts into the country by Iranian-Americans.

“America must abandon any talk of engaging the self-proclaimed reformers [in Iran ] who have not reformed the system in the seven years they have been in power,” says Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who is pushing the broadcasting fund in Congress.

Leading up to the Iraq war, the White House was much more inclined to woo Tehran than it is now. Despite fears about Iranian meddling after the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Iran played a constructive role after that conflict, supporting Hamid Karzai’s fledgling government, said former State Department Afghanistan envoy James Dobbins.

U.S. officials hoped that would continue heading into the Iraq conflict. In January, White House aide Zalmay Khalilzad and State Department officials assured Iranian representatives at a meeting in northern Iraq that the imminent U.S. invasion wouldn’t threaten — and might even benefit — Tehran. The Iranians were told that one of the U.S. war aims was to eliminate the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a longtime Iranian goal. In return, the U.S. asked Iran not to send armed fighters into Iraq, U.S. officials say. Neither side completely complied.

After the hostilities, the Pentagon negotiated a temporary cease-fire that confined the Mujahedin-e-Khalq to bases in eastern Iraq but allowed it to keep its weapons. The arrangement was described as temporary, but it stirred Iranians’ fears that the U.S. wanted the group intact to harass them in the future.

Pentagon officials wrote a memo last month suggesting that the White House could consider naming the Mujahedin-e-Khalq “a legitimate Iranian opposition group,” despite its status as a U.S.-designated terrorist group, according to a U.S. official who quoted from the document. A Pentagon spokesman denied the department had proposed the idea, but the group’s future was discussed at a senior-level meeting two weeks ago, officials said. The State Department’s top counterterrorism official, Cofer Black, argued that would undermine U.S. credibility when it asked other countries to crack down on terrorist groups. Mr. Bush sided with the State Department, and U.S. forces in Iraq now are moving to disarm and eliminate the Mujahedin-e-Khalq.

State Department officials say that decision at least in part is meant to reinforce the message that the U.S. isn’t looking to meddle inside Iran — just as Tehran shouldn’t interfere in Iraq.

But U.S. officials say Iranian Revolutionary Guards — militants loyal to Iran’s hard-line clerics — are seeking to play a role inside Iraq, both by infiltrating the country themselves and by working through Iraqi Shiite clerics, many of whom have spent years living in Iran . Even Iraqis whom the U.S. is counting on to play major roles in an interim Iraqi government have ties to Tehran. One U.S. official said Iranian agents are telling Iraqis that the U.S. doesn’t have the stomach for the long haul and will be gone soon. “The message is, ‘Don’t get too close to the Americans,’ ” the official said.

Mr. Bush hasn’t resolved the disagreement among his advisers, except to play down the option of using military force to achieve regime change in Iran . Secretary of State Colin Powell has little interest in attempting to hold direct talks with the Iranians, as he did recently with the Syrians. Officially, Iran continues to reject direct dialogue with the U.S., but Washington also has spurned what appear to be recent overtures from Tehran that seem to reflect hopes for better relations.

“We do have channels that we are using with the Iranians, and communicating to them that they ought to review their policies,” Mr. Powell told reporters during the weekend. He played down the prospect of seeking better ties with Tehran, though. “The issue of diplomatic relations is not on the table right now, on either side.”

Since the war ended, the administration has chosen a more confrontational path. Administration officials are trying to build support among governments that sit on the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency to condemn what the U.S. contends is Iran’s secret nuclear-weapons program. Iran says its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes. U.S. officials acknowledge Iran is still years away from producing such weapons, but they say inspections of several facilities and other recently obtained intelligence have convinced the U.S. that Iran is working faster than previously known.

The U.S. has supplied Russia and other countries on the IAEA board with some of its intelligence, although a senior U.S. official says it remains unclear what findings the IAEA board will make when it meets next month. Imposing sanctions on Tehran through the United Nations Security Council for its nuclear activities will be difficult. Unlike Iraq and even North Korea, Iran has relations with many European countries and Russia, and their governments appear reluctant to jeopardize these ties by joining a campaign to isolate Tehran.

Complicating the policy debate is that U.S. officials are divided about how much of a threat such Iranian influence poses in Iraq. Some warn that Iran is trying to actively block U.S. hopes of installing a friendly regime in Baghdad. Israeli officials have told the White House that the same thing could happen to the U.S. in Iraq as happened to Israel’s troops in southern Lebanon during the 1980s and 1990s. There, Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shiite militants fought a guerilla war that ultimately drove out the Israelis.

But other U.S. officials argue that Iran is waiting to see how events unfold, and how much political power fellow Shiites will have in Iraq. And it is weighing whether the U.S. is plotting to oust them from power next, says a senior U.S. intelligence official. The more threatening the Bush administration appears to Iranian officials in coming months, “the more active Tehran will be in Iraq to try to keep us tied down so we can’t focus on them,” predicted a U.S. intelligence official.

USA TODAY
May 12, 2003
By Barbara Slavin

Iran’s Islamic government is debating re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States for the first time in 23 years and is holding secret talks with U.S. diplomats in Geneva on a range of issues, including the shape of a new government in Iraq, U.S. and Iranian diplomats say.

The Geneva discussions, due to resume next week, are headed on the U.S. side by Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush’s special envoy to the Iraqi opposition, the diplomats say. A representative of the United Nations opens the talks but does not always stay, U.S. officials say. There have been three meetings this year, the most recent on May 3.

The sessions, which grew out of earlier multilateral discussions on Afghanistan, are the sort of direct, high-level talks with Iran the United States has sought for years. Though U.S. diplomats meet with representatives of Iran’s elected government, the talks have the explicit approval of Islamic clerics, who hold crucial decision-making power over Iran’s foreign policy.

The meetings come as debate heats up in the Bush administration over how to deal with a country that has considerable influence in Iraq, is said to be developing nuclear weapons and is a major supporter of Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups.

The Bush administration has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to declare Iran in violation of its nuclear non-proliferation pledges after discovery of an Iranian program to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons. But in a gesture toward Iran, U.S. forces in Iraq on Saturday began disarming the Mujahedin e-Khalq, an Iraq-based organization that violently opposes the Islamic government in Tehran.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was in the Middle East on Saturday to try to restart Arab-Israeli peace talks, confirmed that a dialogue with Iran was taking place but said restoration of formal relations was not on the horizon.

“The issue of diplomatic relations is not on the table right now for either side,” Powell said. “But in terms of communicating with the Iranians, we have such ways, and we use them on a regular basis.”

Although it is proceeding with talks, the Bush administration is divided over how to approach Iran. Some officials within the Pentagon and vice president’s office see Iran as the next target for U.S.-backed regime change and are reluctant to shore up clerical rule there. Others, primarily in the State Department and National Security Council, regard contacts with Iran’s existing government as necessary to restore stability in Iraq and make headway toward a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement.

“The debate is taking place both in Iran and the United States,” says an Iranian diplomat who asked not to be named. “We are ready to discuss re-establishing relations on the basis of mutual respect, equal footing and seriousness.”

Last week, more than half the Iranian parliament — 154 of 290 members — issued a statement calling on the Foreign Ministry to restore relations with the United States. Opinion polls show more than 70% of Iran’s 70 million people favor restoring ties cut by the United States in 1980 after Iranian students seized U.S. embassy hostages.

Moderates within the regime have favored restoring relations but have been stymied by hard-line clerics who regard the United States as Iran’s chief ideological foe. That balance may be changing, however, as a result of the U.S. toppling of governments on either side of Iran, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last month, after the fall of Baghdad, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is close to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suggested holding a referendum on re-establishing ties with the United States. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was quoted by Iran’s news service last week as saying, “Iran wants to expand its relations with all countries, even with America.”

Los Angeles Times
May 12, 2003
By Eric Slater

AL KHALIS, Iraq, May 12 — A heavily armed Iranian opposition group that the U.S. has listed as a terrorist organization began handing over its weapons to U.S. troops in eastern Iraq on Sunday in exchange for security guarantees.

Under a deal reached Saturday, the several thousand members of Moujahedeen Khalq have seven days to relinquish all heavy weapons and equipment and turn themselves in. Members of the organization, which was backed by Saddam Hussein, also have agreed to be interviewed by intelligence officials.

“When finally accomplished, the peaceful resolution of this process will significantly contribute to a safe and secure environment for the people of Iraq,” the U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, said in a statement.

“Coalition forces are ensuring the security of” the Moujahedeen Khalq, Central Command said. The group fears retribution from Iranian groups as well as anti-Hussein forces.

Moujahedeen Khalq’s capitulation comes less than a month after U.S. forces agreed to a cease-fire with the group, which is known by the initials MEK. That agreement, which let the group retain its weapons, drew criticism from Iran and sparked controversy in Washington.

Calling the cease-fire “a severe blow to America’s prestige,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said last week that the deal “showed that the administration is not honest when it talked about terrorism.”

Some U.S. officials have questioned the propriety of agreeing to a cease-fire with Moujahedeen Khalq, whose members have killed U.S. citizens.

But others argued that the U.S. should support the group, which has long opposed the Iranian government labeled by President Bush as part of an “axis of evil.” And because Moujahedeen Khalq worked closely with Hussein’s government, it may be a source of information on both the former Iraqi regime as well as on Iran.

It was unclear Sunday why the U.S. had struck a new agreement with Moujahedeen Khalq.

Although the cease-fire allowed the group to keep its weapons, the deal required it to stop operating checkpoints between its five main bases and the Iranian border. Reports have circulated here in Al Khalis, 30 miles north of Baghdad where the group has a camp, that the Moujahedeen Khalq raised the ire of Army officials by again setting up the checkpoints to monitor traffic along the border. Those reports, however, could not be confirmed.

The move to disarm Moujahedeen Khalq began Friday, when the U.S. sent tanks, armored personnel carriers and hundreds of troops to surround its compounds.

Army Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno of the 4th Infantry Division met that day with the group’s secretary-general, Central Command said, and less than 24 hours later the group agreed to a new set of rules.

Members will be allowed to retain small arms for personal protection and wear their dark-green uniforms but otherwise will have little say over their activities for the foreseeable future.

By most definitions, the new agreement amounts to a surrender, but U.S. military officials have declined to call it that. Central Command dubbed the development “the voluntary consolidation of MEK forces.”

At a U.S. Army base near one of the group’s camps Sunday, Capt. Josh Felker, an Army spokesman, said, “This is not a surrender, it’s a disarmament process. The MEK was never fighting coalition forces.”

Founded in the 1960s by well-educated leftists, Moujahedeen Khalq is considered the largest and most violent group of exiles seeking to undermine the Iranian government.

In the early 1970s, with the group angry about U.S. support of the pro-Western shah of Iran, members of a Moujahedeen Khalq faction killed several U.S. soldiers and civilians working on defense contracts in the country. The group also supported and possibly aided the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, during which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.

In the 1980s, most of the group’s members, including leader Maryam Rajavi and her husband, head of the military branch of the group, were forced into exile, and the group based itself in Paris. In 1986, the group found a new home in Iraq and set up bases to make cross-border raids into Iran.

In 1992, the organization carried out nearly simultaneous attacks against Iranian installations in 13 countries, demonstrating its international reach. In 1998, the group assassinated the head of Iran’s prison system, and in 2000 it killed the acting director of the Iranian army.

On Sunday, the group’s fighters declined to speak to reporters and asked that their pictures not be taken for fear that relatives in Iran would face retribution from the government.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Abrams tanks that had surrounded the camps Friday turned their barrels around and were protecting the sites.

“They are a very respected fighting force, and as such we are treating them” courteously, Felker said. “Even though they are recognized as a terrorist organization, basically we don’t want to disrespect them. Coalition forces will not allow any other forces to occupy Iraq at this time.”

Agence France Presse
May 10 2003

NORTHEASTERN IRAQ (AFP) – US forces struck a disarmament deal with the Iraq-based Iranian armed opposition, a group listed as a terrorist organization in the United States, a US general told AFP.

The People’s Mujahedeen’s thousands of guerrilla fighters and heavy weapons are to assemble in camps in Iraq under the control of the US-led coalition, said General Ray Odierno, commander of the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division.

“It is not a surrender. It is an agreement to disarm and consolidate,” Odierno said after winding up two days of talks with the group, which has been termed a terrorist organization by the US State Department, the European Union (news – web sites) and Iran.

Speaking at a Mujahedeen base near the Iranian border, the general said they appeared to be committed to democracy in Iran and their cooperation with the United States should prompt a review of their “terrorist” status.

“I would say that any organization that has given up their equipment to the coalition clearly is cooperating with us, and I believe that should lead to a review of whether they are still a terrorist organization or not,” he said.

The Mujahedeen’s 4,000 to 5,000 fighters — many of whom were educated in the United States and Europe — would gather at one camp in Iraq while their equipment, including scores of tanks, would be collected at another, Odierno said.

Both camps would be guarded by coalition forces and the weapons would not be available to the Mujahedeen “unless we agree to allow them to have access”, the general said.

The fighters, including a large number of women, would not be categorized as prisoners of war but they would be under “coalition control.” Their status would be decided by Washington at a later date.

They are likely to face brutal retribution if they are repatriated to Iran, while asylum in the United States could fuel charges of double standards (news – web sites) in the US fight against terrorism.

Asked what role they could play in the future of Iraq, Odierno said only that they shared similar goals to the United States in “forming democracy and fighting oppression” and that they had been “extremely cooperative.”

US and Mujahedeen troops have mingled cordially during the discussions here over the past two days, although the US military was taking no chances with regular overflights by F-15 bombers and Apache attack helicopters.

Washington’s dialogue with the Mujahedeen has infuriated Iran, which has accused the United States of hypocrisy in its “war on terror”.

Also known by its Persian name Mujahedeen-e Khalq, the group has mounted major attacks inside Iran and has been fighting to overthrow the clerical regime in Tehran since shortly after it seized power.

US officers are concerned that if the group is rendered powerless, rival guerrillas from the Badr Brigade, the Iran-based military wing of the main Iraqi Shiite faction, will gain influence in the region.

Policy Is Reversed on Exiles in Iraq
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 9, 2003; Page A01

The Bush administration, increasingly concerned about the activities of an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq, has decided to actively seek its surrender, just weeks after the U.S. Central Command arranged a cease-fire that allowed the group to keep many of its weapons and maintain its camps.

The closely held decision was reached by President Bush’s senior foreign policy advisers last week and is part of a larger struggle within the administration over its policy toward Iran. The country shares a long border with Iraq and has alarmed U.S. officials with its links with terrorism and pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Some State Department officials are eager for a thaw in relations with Iran. But the Pentagon and other administration officials believe the Iranian government is facing severe internal pressures from popular discontent, and see little reason to engage with Iranian leaders.

That left the fate of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq in the midst of a tug of war within the administration, officials said.

Some Pentagon officials had suggested that the exile group, which is seeking to overthrow the Iranian government, could serve as a proxy force against Iranians who have moved across the border into southern Iraq and at least would make the Iranian government worried about U.S. intentions in the region. The group, also known as the People’s Mujaheddin, has maintained for the past decade thousands of fighters armed with tanks, armored vehicles and artillery in camps along the Iraq-Iran border.

But the State Department, which in 1997 labeled the group a foreign terrorist organization, successfully argued that the United States could not condone its existence in the midst of fighting a war against terrorism. Moreover, State Department officials believe, last month’s cease-fire agreement was a betrayal of an arrangement the administration set with Iran before the Iraq war to disarm the group.

In a meeting in January between U.S. and Iranian officials, and through messages subsequently delivered through British diplomats, the United States suggested it would target People’s Mujaheddin as a way of gaining Iran’s cooperation to seal its border and provide assistance to search-and-rescue missions for downed U.S. pilots during the war.

U.S. forces in early April bombed People’s Mujaheddin camps, killing about 50 people, according to the group, before the cease-fire was arranged about three weeks ago, at a time of growing alarm within the administration about spreading Iranian influence among Iraqi Shiites. The People’s Mujaheddin are based in three camps northeast of Baghdad near the Iranian border.

In the aftermath of the U.S. military victory, State Department officials said, Iran has sent signals that it is interested in improved relations with the United States. In what some regarded as a significant development, Iran’s former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said Iran’s resumption of ties with the United States could be put to a referendum.

In an apparent reference to previous failures by the countries to begin a constructive dialogue, he said, “We missed certain opportunities, or took late or wrong measures, or even did not take action.”

The cease-fire arranged April 15 by Central Command, which oversees military operations in Iraq, appeared to have convinced the Iranian government it was double- crossed on the issue of the People’s Mujaheddin. The official Iranian news agency has broadcast reports saying the United States was cooperating closely with the group, including allowing its fighters to dress in U.S. military uniforms at border crossings.

Earlier this week, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi declared that the cease-fire “has dealt a severe blow to America’s prestige. It showed that the administration was not honest when it talked about terrorism.”

Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, said, “The way this plays out may make the Iranians nervous about what our intentions are.”

But, in what could be seen as a victory for the State Department, senior officials decided last week that the cease-fire was counterproductive to the administration’s larger aims in the region and the war on terror.

“The P.C. decided they can continue to exist for now, until Centcom can effect a complete surrender of this group,” an administration official said, referring to what is known as the principals committee, the president’s senior foreign policy advisers.

White House, Pentagon and State Department officials declined to comment on the decision, which was communicated over the weekend through a special channel to the Iranian government.

Iran may have signaled its pleasure at the development Wednesday. During a visit to Luxembourg, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi suggested that Iran is seeking to improve relations with the United States, which were severed during the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed shah. “Generally, Iran wants to expand its relations with all countries, even America,” he said.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, the Washington representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political arm of the People’s Mujaheddin, said the cease-fire allowed the group to keep its weapons in a noncombat formation and would allow it to respond in self-defense to attacks by Iranian troops.

Jafarzadeh said the United States agreed to the cease-fire because it began to understand that Iran poses a greater danger to U.S. interests in Iraq. “When U.S. forces saw with their own eyes the level of the threat posed by the Iranian regime, they realized this cease-fire was appropriate,” he said.

Jafarzadeh said that based on information collected by the People’s Mujaheddin, at least 14,000 Iranian troops, in civilian clothes, and 2,000 clerics have entered Iraq from Iran to try to create a Iranian-leaning Islamic state in the power vacuum left by the fall of Saddam Hussein. U.S. officials dismiss those figures as exaggerated.

Jafarzadeh also provided copies of documents that he said showed the involvement of the Iranian government, at the highest levels, seeking to influence the political situation in Iraq. One document, dated April 19 and stamped “top secret,” dealt with using the Red Crescent (the Islamic Red Cross) as a cover for Iranian efforts to gain control in major cities in the south, he said.

The People’s Mujaheddin — who U.S. analysts say received funding from Hussein’s government — has rejected the label as a terrorist group, saying it is on the same side as the United States. Clawson said he believes it was “silly to list them as a terrorist group,” because they have not attacked U.S. targets since the shah of Iran fell in January 1979. “They are not engaged in terror attacks,” he said. “They do armed attacks against Iran.”

One U.S. official said that about three months ago, 300 to 400 Iranian troops entered northern Iraq to join forces with Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, who is close to senior officials in the Pentagon. The arrangement was troubling to officials in the State Department, but the official said the Pentagon did not appear concerned.

Later, as concerns mounted about Iranian influence in post-Hussein Iraq, some of the same officials who had shrugged off the earlier insertion of Iranian troops began to maintain that the presence of Iranian forces was proof a tougher stance against Iran was necessary. Some officials even began to press for using the People’s Mujaheddin as a proxy force against the Iranians.

“I know it sounds Machiavellian, but it played out that way,” the official said.

Associated Press
April 29, 2003
By Nicole Winfield

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar (AP) The U.S. cease-fire with an Iranian exile group it considers a terrorist organization allows the Mujahedeen Khalq to defend itself from Iranian-sponsored attacks and keep its artillery and other weapons, U.S. military officials said Tuesday.

The cease-fire signed April 15 appears to be a way for the United States to increase pressure on Iran, which Washington has accused of meddling in Iraq after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

But it represents a conundrum of sorts for the United States, which has classified the Iraq-based group as a terrorist organization. The United States went to war against Iraq in part to dismantle what it said were terrorist networks supported by Saddam’s regime.

U.S. officials had said they were working out a capitulation by the left-leaning group, also known as the People’s Mujahedeen. But on Tuesday, a U.S. military official said the deal doesn’t require the group’s fighters to surrender to coalition forces at least for now.

It allows the Mujahedeen Khalq to use military force against what the United States says are Iranian infiltrators entering Iraq, such as the Badr Brigade, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Independent newspaper of Britain has reported that armed members of the Badr Brigade had crossed into Iraq from Iran and were holding sway in Baqubah, a town 25 miles northeast of Baghdad. The brigade is the military wing of the Iran-based anti-Saddam group the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The U.S. official said the Mujahedeen Khalq also ”reserves the right of self-defense against the Iranian regime’s attacks.”

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group that includes the Mujahedeen, says members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have crossed into Iraq and fought Mujahedeen fighters in recent weeks.

A top official in the council, Mohammad Mohaddessin, praised the agreement and said anything short of allowing Mujahedeen fighters to defend themselves would have only benefited the Tehran regime.

”It would only be natural that the Mujahedeen … would be able to keep their weapons against such a common enemy,” he said in a telephone interview from Paris.

When asked how the United States could make deals with groups classified as terrorists, the U.S. military official said the cease-fire was a battlefield agreement that coalition commanders were entitled to negotiate.

”Like all other parties in Iraq we will use U.S. influence and power to establish and maintain a secure and stable environment,” the official said.

Mohaddessin said the agreement showed that the Mujahedeen should not be considered a terrorist group. He said he expected the Mujahedeen would negotiate another ”agreement of mutual understanding” with the United States about the eventual status of their forces in Iraq in the near future.

U.S. officials have charged that Shiite Muslim-controlled Iran was sending operatives into neighboring Iraq to destabilize the country further and promote an Iranian-style theocracy among Iraq’s predominantly Shiite population.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has ruled out a theocracy for Iraq. On Monday, in an interview with the Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera, he said Iran’s meddling was problematic.

”That type of external influence I don’t think is helpful,” he said. ”I don’t know anyone who does think it’s helpful except the few people from Iran that run that country, a small clique of clerics.”

Shiites make up over 60 percent of Iraq’s population, and there are concerns that free elections might produce an Islamic-oriented government with close ties to the historically anti-American Shiite clerics who have governed Iran since the 1979 revolution.

Iran has denied meddling in Iraq. On Monday, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Tehran wants to see an Iraqi government that is chosen by the people.

”For us the most important thing is that the Iraqi people independently choose their leadership and that the new government depends on the will of all the ethnic strata of Iraq,” Kharrazi said while visiting Azerbaijan.

The U.S. military official outlined the scope of the cease-fire deal, which he said was signed by a coalition forces commander and Mahdi Baraie of the Mujahedeen Khalq to ”ensure a complete cessation of hostilities.”

Under the agreement, the official said, the Mujahedeen agreed to ”not fire upon or commit any hostile act toward any coalition forces; not destroy or damage any government or private property, for example public infrastructure, oil pumping, refining, storage, or transportation facilities, and … place all towed artillery and air defense artillery in a passive travel mode.”

In return, coalition forces agreed to not damage any of the group’s vehicles or equipment and not fire upon or commit any hostile act toward its forces.

”Additionally the agreement does not surrender or capitulate troops under the command of the (Mujahedeen Khalq) commander,” the official said.

During the 1970s, the group staged attacks that killed several U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Iran. It supported the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 but later broke with the Iranian government.

Agence France Presse
April 22, 2003

NICOSIA (AFP) – The leader of the Iraqi-based Iranian armed opposition, the People’s Mujahedeen, welcomed a “ceasefire agreement” he said had been reached with US forces.

In a statement received here by AFP, Massoud Rajavi said: “We welcome the signing of a ceasefire agreement with the US forces … although, we have not been firing at anyone and were in fact not a party to this war.”

The statement gave no details of the accord, and a People’s Mujahedeen spokesman in Paris was not immediately able to provide any.

Separately, the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera reported that a deal had been reached and that talks were still underway on the future of the group in Iraq (news – web sites).

Rajavi said in his statement that “our presence in Iraq was conditional upon our independence. From now on, we will try to secure an understanding and agreement on this very basis.

“The Iranian Resistance has not been and is not involved in Iraqi affairs.

“Our only concern has been and will continue to remain the illegitimate regime ruling Iran. Thus, we have not had and will not have any hostility towards, or quarrel with, any group or current in Iraq, whether Shiite, Sunni, Kurd or Arab. For this reason, we welcome any understanding and friendship.”

Last week, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said at the US Central Command in Qatar that US-led forces were trying to organize a ceasefire with the People’s Mujahedeen.

“There’s work that’s ongoing right now to secure some sort of agreement that will lead to a ceasefire and capitulation,” Brooks said.

Contacted Tuesday on the reported deal, officials at Central Command said they had no information.

The People’s Mujahedeen has been labeled a terrorist organization by Iran, the United States and the European Union, although it says it targets only the military and other elements of Tehran’s clerical regime.

The group was given sanctuary by Saddam Hussein (news – web sites) in 1986, when he was in the thick of a bloody war with his neighbour, after being driven out of Iran in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

In his statement, Rajavi remained defiant against the Iranian government, and welcomed demonstrations by Iranian exiles in several cities around the world Saturday to protest reported Iranian attacks on Mujahedeen bases in Iraq.

“In a series of savage attacks,” he said, “the mullahs and their mercenaries killed scores” of Mujahedeen. In some cases, they decapitated or mutilated” them and “also wounded 50 more.

“Our struggle has been and remains only with the mullahs’ illegitimate regime. If the mullahs deny this Resistance’s righteousness and the Iranian people’s vast support for it, they could immediately test their chances against the Iranian people and Resistance by accepting a free election for a constituent assembly and presidency under the supervision of the United Nations (news – web sites).”

As to what he said was a reward offered for his capture, Rajavi said: “My life is not any more precious than the 120,000 Mojahedin executed by the regime so far.”

On Monday, the head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards demanded that the United States extradite Rajavi, whose whereabouts are unknown, to show it was sincere in combating terrorism.

“We know that the US has listed the MKO (People’s Mujahedeen) as a terrorist organization, so in order to prove it is sincere in the war against terrorism, the US has to hand over the MKO’s leader to us,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Yahya Rahim Safavi as saying.

Iran military chief demands US extradite Mojahedin Leader

Agence France Presse

APRIL 21, 2003

TEHRAN, April 21 (AFP) – The head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards on Monday demanded the US extradite the head of the Iraq-based People’s Mojahedin to show it is sincere in combating terrorism, IRNA reported.

“We know that the US has listed the MKO as a terrorist organization, so in order to prove it is sincere in the war against terrorism, the US has to hand over the Mojahedin’s leader to us,” the official news agency quoted Yahya Rahim Safavi as saying.

“Since the US has trapped them and until the time the US hands them over to us, anything they (theMojahedin) do against Iran, the US bears responsibility,” he added.

US-led forces in Iraq have targeted several Mojahedin camps and are trying to negotiate the group’s surrender. However the whereabouts of the group’s leader, Massoud Rajavi, is unclear.

The People’s Mojahedin has been labeled a terrorist organization by Iran, the United States and the European Union, although it says it targets only the military and other elements of Tehran’s clerical regime.

The group was given sanctuary by now deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 1986, when he was in the thick of a bloody war with his neighbor, after it was driven out of Iran in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

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