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Iran Protests King Abdullah’s Approval Of Bush Remarks
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| Kharrazi: Foreign policy of the Bush administration is 'self-centered' |
TEHRAN, Feb. 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iran's foreign ministry summoned the Jordanian ambassador to protest the recent stance by Jordan's King Abdullah II supporting U.S. President George W. Bush's accusations against Iran, Iraq and North Korea, the Iranian state radio reported.
The foreign ministry protested recent remarks by the Jordanian monarch, who said he supported Bush's position "tremendously", and called for explanations from the Jordanian government. In his meeting with Bush Friday, Abdullah said: "I endorse tremendously that view and that position."
"The president has been very articulate from the beginning of the 11th of September that there is a new world, there's new expectations of how countries are supposed to react, and those countries better make up their minds pretty quickly," Abdullah said, AFP reported.
Bush branded Iran, Iraq and North Korea an "axis of evil" during his State of the Union speech last week, referring to their alleged sponsorship of so-called terrorism and development of weapons of mass destruction. "All the three countries I mentioned are now on notice that we intend to take their development of weapons of mass destruction very seriously," he said as he welcomed Jordan's king to the White House.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Tuesday that Bush's characterization of the three states was "deserving of this kind of designation," but that the United States was not about to invade any one of them.
In response to U.S. claims that Iran was helping suspected Al-Qaeda members escape from Afghanistan, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi has challenged the United States to provide evidence of Al-Qaeda members crossing the border from Afghanistan into Iran, BBC’s online news service reported.
Speaking at a news conference in Tehran, he however acknowledged that the long, remote and largely mountainous border was impossible to seal and said Washington should provide Iran with any information it had - instead of launching propaganda attacks on Iran.
Kharrazi admitted that narcotics smugglers and migrants had continued to enter Iran from Afghanistan despite strenuous Iranian efforts over many years to stop them.
He urged the United States to share any information they had so that Iran could take action. Any Al-Qaeda or Taleban members caught in Iran, he said, would be handed back to the authorities of their own countries.
As the war of words intensifies between Washington and Tehran, Kharrazi has also sent a long letter to the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, denouncing what he called unfounded allegations and threats of force against Iran by the Americans.
He said Israel had succeeded in hijacking the American war against so-called terrorism and turning it into unconditional US support for its own occupation and brutal suppression of the Palestinians.
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