POLITICS-IRAN: Khatami Calls for Negotiations on Afghan War

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 21 1998 (IPS) - Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, in his debut before the United Nations, threw his support Monday behind a negotiated solution to the war in Afghanistan.

Just one hour before before eight nations began UN-brokered talks on Afghanistan, Khatami bluntly told the U.N. General Assembly that “there is no military solution to that country’s predicament.”

“The Afghan people, like other peoples in the world, have the inalienable right to determine their own destiny, and have the right to enjoy a broad-based government representing all ethnic groups, communities and tendencies in that country,” Khatami said. “This is the only way to restore tranquility in Afghanistan.”

He urged the United Nations to “bring all the parties to the conflict to the negotiating table”, and, in an apparent reference to Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militias, to “bring the rogue elements into compliance with the will of the international community”.

Iran stuck to that line later on Monday, when Iranian diplomats joined their counterparts from Russia, the United States, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in talks at the U.N. headquarters.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan hoped to draw the eight countries together in finding common approaches on Afghanistan following the deepening rift between the Taliban and Iran.

“A particular danger is posed by the increase in tension in the border areas between Iran and Afghanistan,” he told the eight delegations at the opening of their meeting. “The threat, if allowed to continue unattended, poses a very real danger to the peace and stability of the region.”

Last week, Iran announced the expansion of its forces near the Afghan border to some 270,000 troops following the Taliban takeover of Bamiyan, an area populated by ethnic Hazaras – who, like most Iranians, belong to the Shi’a sect of Islam.

U.N. officials contended that Taliban forces massacred Hazaras in the city of Mazar-e-Sharief last month and warned about the “potential for similar atrocities in Bamiyan” and the “reports of population displacements” there since last week’s Taliban victory. Some officials declared that already there had been reports of massacres in Bamiyan, although the Taliban denied the claim and agreed to allow U.N. officials into Bamiyan to investigate.

Teheran, however, was still furious at the murder of nine Iranian diplomats and a journalist in Mazar-e-Sharief following the city’s fall to the Taliban in August. The Taliban has blamed the killings on forces operating on their own, and has promised an internal investigation.

With war drums sounding Pakistan – which borders both nations and is the Taliban’s strongest supporter – has tried to mediate in a bid to avert a war.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with Khatami on Monday morning, and Sharif’s communications minister, Mushahid Hussein, drew attention to what he called Islamabad’s close ties with both parties. A war between predominantly Shi’a Iran and the radical Sunni Taliban would be “a disaster for all Muslims”, Hussein said.

At the same time, although regional powers increasingly agree on the need to avoid an Iran-Afghanistan conflict, there is considerably less agreement on the Taliban, which controls more than 90 percent of Afghanistan but is recognised only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Taliban is not expected to agree to share power with its opponents, who have lost almost all their major bases in recent weeks.

“What is sorely needed in Afghanistan is a representative and inclusive government which truly reflects the interests of all ethnic and religious groups in the country,” Annan said Monday. “The Taliban need to be told what the international community expects of them by way of minimum standards of behaviour.”

However, Hussein warned, “You cannot win at the negotiating tables what you could not win on the battlefield.”

The Islamist group maintained it was not the only party accused of atrocities in the long-running Afghan war. Taliban spokeswoman, Laili Helms, told IPS that the anti-Taliban Afghan parties, called the Northern Alliance, had killed at least 180 people in rocket attacks on the capital, Kabul.

“The rockets slammed into a very crowded part of the city…they went straight into markets,” she said. “The scene was just horrendous.”

Khatami, in addition to pledging support for negotiations, told the General Assembly that the United Nations should “engage in planning for the mobilisation of requisite international asistance for reconstruction of Afghanistan” once the crisis is resolved.

The emphasis on negotiations on Afghanistan was just one of the ways that Khatami set himself apart from the conservative Iranian clergy that has dominated Iran since the 1979 revolution which ousted Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. He delivered a lengthy defense of liberty and democracy, arguing that “humanity, despite all calamities and hardship, is heading toward emancipation and liberty”.

In an unusual twist, both Khatami and U.S. President Bill Clinton Monday denied that there was any “clash of civilisations” between the Western and Islamic nations.

Khatami issued “a call for a dialogue between civilisations and cultures, rather than a clash between them.” Clinton openly doubted any such clash and added, “Americans respect and honour Islam…we will continue to look for common values, common interests and common endeavours.”

Despite this agreement, there was no meeting between Clinton and Khatami Monday and Washington still labels Iran as an international supporter of terrorism. A potential meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi at the Afghanistan talks was avoided when Iran replaced the senior official with his deputy, Javed Zarif. As a result, the first encounter between senior-level U.S. and Iranian officials since the 1979 revolution never materialised.

While Khatami was speaking at the United nations, hundreds of Iranians supporting Iranian resistance leader Maryam Rajavi – including dissident clergyman Ayatollah Jalal Ganje’i – rallied just blocks away from the U.N. headquarters.

(Some Iranians, accompanied by several U.S. politicians and some other activists, were denied entry onto the U.N. grounds following a telephone threat objecting to Khatami’s arrival, a security official said on condition of anonymity.)

“Since he came into office on Aug. 3, 1997, after a landslide election, President Khatami has encouraged greater freedom of expression,” said Human Rights Watch in a statement. “But President Khatami has been unable to make any discernible progress in fulfilling his campaign promises to institutionalise the rule of law and to protect the rights of citizens.”

The human rights watchdog group said that arrests of dissidents, torture and harassment of religious minorities and the press continue to take place in Iran.