POLITICS: Iran and Britain to Normalise Relations

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 24 1998 (IPS) - For the first time since 1989, when Iran’s Islamist government issued a death edict on British author Salman Rushdie, Teheran and London have pledged to normalise relations and resolve their disputes .

That progress was announced by British Foreign Minister Robin Cook and his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharrazi, on Thursday after the two met at the United Nations and settled their differences on the Rushdie affair.

“The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has no intention, nor is it going to take any action whatsoever, to threaten the life of the author of ‘The Satanic Verses’ or anybody associated with his work, nor will it encourage or assist anybody to do so,” Kharrazi said after the meeting.

“Accordingly, the government disassociates itself from any reward which has been offered in this regard and does not support it,” Kharrazi added.

Those words should offer some qualified relief for Rushdie, whose 1988 novel ‘The Satanic Verses’ contained passages satirising events in the life of the prophet Mohammed which the government of Iran, among others, found blasphemous. The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, issued a ‘fatwa’ (edict) condemning Rushdie to death on Feb. 14, 1989, just months before Khomeini died.

In recent years, Iran had said that it could not rescind the edict since only Khomeini could have done so, but claimed that it would not enforce it. But a dispute between Iranian hard-liners, including current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and moderates like President Mohammed Khatami has continued over how to deal with the fatwa.

Until Kharrazi’s statement, for example, an Iranian parastatal organisation – or bonyad – had been responsible for offering a two million dollar bounty on Rushdie’s life, which only last year was raised to 2.5 million dollars. The status of that reward is now in doubt, given Iran’s distancing from it.

Similarly, although Khatami on Tuesday told reporters in New York that “we should consider the Salman Rushdie affair as completely finished”, Teheran has never been eager to say that the fatwa is no longer in force.

Cook, however, was satisfied by Khazzazi’s clarifications. The assurances on Rushdie, he said, should lead to “the opening of a new chapter in our relations. Dr Kharrazi and I have, accordingly, agreed that we should upgrade the level of our diplomatic relations to ambassadorial level.”

Cook also took pains to soothe Iran’s anger over Rushdie’s book, saying that Britain “recognised the fundamental role of Islam in Iranian life and understood and regretted the offence that the book ‘The Satanic Verses’ has caused to Muslims in Iran and around the world”.

The two foreign ministers also agreed to hold talks about combatting drug trafficking and providing aid for refugees, and both joined behind recent calls for a “broad-based” government in Afghanistan, where Iran has been at loggerheads with the ruling Taliban militias in recent weeks.

The resolution of the Rushdie affair may come as a mixed blessing for the author himself, an Indian Muslim who is a British citizen. Rushdie, who has written extensively in recent years about his distress at living in hiding since the fatwa, has credited Cook as one of the few British politicians who consistently has urged for a resolution of the affair.

As the fatwa has not been rescinded – it is not clear how Khameini or other religious leaders will view Kharrazi’s statement that Iran will not be involved with paying any reward for Rushdie’s life.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Thursday that Washington welcomed Iran’s statements on Rushdie, but would study them before determining any response. (Albright and Kharrazi did not meet this week despite several group meetings at which they might have done so, and a meeting similarly was avoided between Khatami and U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Still, the apparent agreement over the Rushdie affair and the friendly tone of the British-Iranian talks capped an upbeat week for Teheran’s new government, with Khatami and Kharrazi striking a more moderate tone than their Islamist predecessors.

Iran won a large degree of support for its call for an investigation into the killings of several of its diplomats by Taliban forces in the Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharief last month, as well as for measures to protect Afghanistan’s Hazara minority – who, like the majority of Iranians, belong to Islam’s Shi’a sect.

Khatami’s call for a dialogue between Islam and the West also was echoed by other leaders, including Cook and Clinton, in his address to the U.N. General Assembly Monday.