Iraq: Detained Iranians 'working with govt approval'

The Iraqi foreign minister today said the five Iranians detained by US-led forces in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq were working in a liaison office that had government approval and was in the process of being approved as a consulate.

Foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, also said US forces tried to seize more people at the airport in Irbil, 220 miles north of Baghdad, prompting a confrontation with Kurdish troops guarding the facility that was resolved without casualties. The US military did not immediately comment on that incident.

The arrests drew condemnation from local Kurdish authorities, who protested that they were not informed in advance, and have raised fears that tensions between Iran and the US were hurting Iraq's interests.

“We don’t want Iraq to be a battleground for settling scores with other countries,” Zebari told CNN later in an interview.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s office, meanwhile, rejected US president George Bush’s plans to send 21,500 more American troops to Iraq as part of a wide-ranging new effort to curb rampant sectarian attacks.

“We reject Bush’s new strategy and we think it will fail,” said Abdul-Razzaq al-Nidawi, a senior official in al-Sadr’s office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

He said Iraq’s problems were due to the presence of US troops and called for their withdrawals.

“We call upon the American people to oppose sending more of their sons to Iraq so that they will not be flown back in coffins,” he said.

Prime minister Nouri Maliki also announced his government would implement a new security plan for Baghdad, including neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood sweeps by Iraqi forces backed by US troops.

Similar efforts have failed in the past because of the Shiite-dominated government’s resistance to cracking down on militias such as the Mahdi Army, which is loyal to al-Sadr and has been blamed for much of the recent sectarian violence.

The Bush proposal calls for up to 12,000 additional Iraqi troops to secure Baghdad.

The Iranians were detained yesterday as multinational forces entered the building overnight and confiscated computers and documents, two senior local Kurdish officials said.

Six people suspected of being involved in attacks against Iraqi civilians and military forces were initially detained, the US military said in a statement. One was later released. The statement did not identify the nationalities of the suspects.

Iraqi and Iranian officials initially said the Iranian office raided in Irbil was a diplomatic mission, which raised questions about whether those detained had diplomatic immunity.

However, Zebari said the Iranians worked at a “liaison office” that was in the process of becoming a consulate.

“This office is not new and has been there for more than 10 years,” he said. “We are now in the process of changing these offices to consulates and … we will open consulates in Iran.”

“The request to open offices was approved by the Foreign Ministry and has sent to the Cabinet for approval,” he added. “It is not a new office. This liaison office has been there for a long time.”

Mohammad Ali Hosseini, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman who initially said it was a diplomatic mission, later changed the description to an “office of relations” and said it was waiting for permission to operate as a consulate.

The US Embassy also said it was assured the building was not a consulate.

“The government of Iraq has indicated through formal diplomatic channels that the Irbil office was not accredited as a consulate and it has not asserted that the detained individuals have diplomatic privileges and immunities,” embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said.

The regional Kurdish government condemned the arrest of the Iranians and called for their release. Many Kurds, including Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, have close ties to Iran. Last month, US troops detained at least two Iranians and released two others who had diplomatic immunity.

Two of those detained were visiting as guests of Talabani, his spokesman said.

Zebari also said American forces also went to the Irbil airport yesterday but didn’t identify themselves or give advance notice to local authorities.

“No party had knowledge of this matter and that is why the force protecting the airport tried to interfere and find out who they were and what they were doing,” he said.

“Later it became clear that they are American special forces looking for people that did not exist.”

The concerns expressed by Kurdish authorities, who have been among the staunchest supporters of US efforts in Iraq, reflected the difficulties they face in trying to maintain close ties with both Iran and the US despite the hostility between the two.

The raids came as US officials repeated long-standing accusations that Iran is encouraging the violence in Iraq by supplying money and weapons.

Bush vowed to isolate Iran and Syria as part of his new war strategy.

“I think it’s instructive that in the last couple of weeks two of those raids that we conducted to go after these folks that are providing these kinds of weapons – two of those raids had policed up Iranians,” Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington.

”So it is clear that the Iranians are complicit in providing weapons.”

In Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said it summoned the Iraqi and Swiss ambassadors and “demanded an explanation” about the Irbil incident. Switzerland represents American interests in Iran.

A resident near the Iranian office in Irbil said foreign forces used percussion grenades and brought down an Iranian flag from the roof of the yellow, two-story building. As the operation continued, two helicopters flew overhead, the resident said, speaking on condition that his name not be used because he feared retribution.

In the afternoon, Kurdish militiamen surrounded the building, preventing people from approaching. They did not allow cameramen and photographers to take pictures.

Irbil is in the Kurdish-controlled north, a relatively peaceful part of the country 220 miles from Baghdad.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said yesterday that the detained Iranians were being questioned.

However, the US Embassy declined to give an update on their status today.

Tensions are high between Iran and the US.

The Bush administration, which sent troops to Iraq in 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein, has accused Tehran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and of helping fuel violence in Iraq.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, is trying to expand Tehran’s role in Iraq to counter US influence in the region.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the government was seeking clarification from the Americans and the Iranians about the detainees. He also chided both sides, along with Syria, for using Iraq to fight their political battles.

“Sometimes we pay the price for the tension in relations between Iran and the US and Syria, therefore it is in our interest ... that these relations improve, but not at the expense of Iraq,” he said.

A bipartisan US panel, the Iraq Study Group, in December called for a new diplomatic drive to enlist Syria and Iran in peace efforts. Instead, Bush accused both countries of aiding terrorists and insurgents in Iraq in his speech on Wednesday outlining his new war strategy.

“We will disrupt the attacks on our forces,” Bush said. ”We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria.”