[NYTr] Another Lie Exposed: UN Says *No Evidence* Iran Supplies Arms to Taliban

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

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CanWest via Montreal Gazette - Sep 24, 2007
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=3d2bb503-861d-4439-bce8-b73b041b2655&p=2

OR: http://tinyurl.com/2qeuly

No evidence Iran supplies arms to Taliban, UN says
 
MIKE BLANCHFIELD
CanWest News Service

A top United Nations diplomat is rejecting repeated claims from the
Bush administration that Iran is supplying weapons to the Taliban
insurgency in Afghanistan.

The allegations of Iranian meddling in Afghanistan first surfaced in
June, and gained momentum with senior U.S. intelligence and military
officials accusing Iran of officially endorsing the shipment of
armaments across its eastern border.

If true, the implications for Canadian troops in Afghanistan would be
serious, Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier said.

Seventy Canadian soldiers and one Canadian diplomat have lost their
lives in Afghanistan, more than half from roadside bombs that have
grown increasingly sophisticated and powerful in the last year.

Asked whether the UN has seen any evidence of Iranian weaponry reaching
the Taliban insurgency, Chris Alexander, the deputy United Nations
representative to Kabul, told CanWest News Service: "None. It's the
other border across which arms and weapons principally arrive."

Alexander was referring to Pakistan, Afghanistan's eastern neighbour,
where a reconstituted Taliban and Al-Qa'ida insurgency has mounted
renewed guerrilla attacks in the last 18 months that have severely
challenged Canada and its NATO allies in southern Afghanistan.

The insurgents are comprised of foreign mercenaries from across the
Islamic world.

"We are, quite frankly, trying to encourage everyone to recommit to
having a sense of proportion, to putting the reality of the insecurity
of Afghanistan into proportion," Alexander said.

"That means not saying that Iran is the principle source of arms
shipments to the Taliban. That's simply not true."

Alexander, who was Canada's first ambassador to Afghanistan in 2003,
after the fall of the Taliban two years earlier, said Iran actually
opposes the Taliban.

He said Iran has signed on as an international development partner that
is committed to rebuilding Afghanistan, contributing tens of millions
of dollars of aid to the country.

Yesterday, Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, praised Iran as an
ally in the fight against the rampant opium trade that plagues his
country.

"It's an important area between us and Iran," Karzai said, noting 3,000
Iranian security forces have lost their lives combating the drug trade.

President George W. Bush tried to persuade Karzai during a visit to
Washington last month that the Iranians are "not a force for good as
far as we can see" and told the Afghan president "they're a
destabilizing influence wherever they are."

Karzai said little in his appearance with Bush. But before arriving in
Washington, he told CNN: "We have had very good, very close relations"
with Iran and that "so far, Iran has been a helper and a solution."

Bush's comments came as U.S. military and intelligence officials have
begun building a case that Iran is backing insurgents inside
Afghanistan.

"We're deeply concerned about that," Bernier, Canada's new foreign
minister, told CanWest News Service. "If it's true, such support will
directly endanger the lives of Canadians and international forces and
aid workers."

Asked if he had any information to substantiate the allegation against
Iran, Bernier said he "didn't have any more detail on that."

Bernier added he was "surprised and concerned" about the reports
because Iran is a signatory to last year's Afghanistan Compact, the
document that lays out the international community's commitment to
rebuilding Afghanistan.

Many, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, have hailed Alexander as
an expert on Afghanistan.

Alexander said while Iran's pursuit of nuclear power is a serious issue
that the UN and the international community must confront, it should
not be confused with its relations with Afghanistan.

Intertwining the two issues and assuming Iran bears ill will toward
Afghanistan would only serve to undermine the international efforts to
defeat the Taliban insurgency and rebuild the country, as well as to
hamper the legitimate goal of curbing Tehran's nuclear ambitions, he
said.

"This comes back to the question of the higher order coherence of our
policies. To be successful in Afghanistan, the international community
has to have a consistent policy not just with Afghanistan, but with its
neighbours," Alexander said.

Iran is spending about $50 million a year on aid in Afghanistan, "which
is spent in very efficient ways on education, on capacity building, on
roads, on electricity, on some irrigation," he said.

Ottawa Citizen

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007