February 11, 2002	Monday	Ziqa’ad 27, 1422

TEHRAN, Feb 10: Diplomatic ties between Tehran and London seem to be on the brink of collapse after the Iranian ambassador to Britain returned home and it was unclear whether he would go back, the daily Iran News reported on Sunday.

Quoting informed Foreign Ministry sources, the daily reported that after Iranian ambassador Morteza Sarmadi, a former deputy minister, was downgraded by London to charge d’affaires level, Tehran might react by not sending him back again.

The quandary started after Iran confirmed rejection of David Reddaway as London’s choice for new ambassador to Tehran due to his alleged Jewish race and former activities at the British secret service MI6.

London rejected both charges and says that it was not willing to appoint an alternative to Reddaway, who is married to an Iranian, and that Tehran should bear the consequences of the rejection.

Iran expressed surprise on Friday at London’s reaction over the ambassador dilemma and said that not accepting an ambassador is the legitimate right of any country and should not affect bilateral ties.

After the recent accusations by the United States against Iran over supporting terrorism and manufacturing mass destruction weapons, Tehran has turned more than ever to the European Union and the crisis with London is regarded as not very advantageous for the Iranian administration.

Tehran severed ties with London in 1989 following the death decree issued by the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, against British author Salman Rushdie, whose book “The Satanic Verses” is considered by Iran as blasphemous.

Ties were resumed in 1991 but never rose above charge d’affaires level. During the 1999 UN General Assembly meeting in New York, however, the foreign ministers of the two countries decided to upgrade ties to ambassadorial level.

The two visits by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to Iran, the first by a high level British official, and several phone contacts between Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were regarded as the turning point of the new era between the two nations.

IRAN-US DISPUTE:The dispute between Iran and the United States is at the heart of the whole Middle East tragedy, a US expert on the region just honoured by Tehran told AFP in an interview on Sunday.

Author and academic Michael Barry, who received the prize for Iranology in a series of literature awards presented by President Mohammad Khatami Saturday, said the whole region was paying the price for the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by Iranian militants.

The holding of more than 50 Americans hostage for 444 days was perceived as a humiliation greater than the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbour or the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington, he said.

In revenge Washington had been determined to isolate and sideline Iran at any cost, Barry added.

He said that the United States used Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in his 1980-88 war with Iran to this end, and had applied the same policy in Afghanistan.

“In Afghanistan in the 1980s the United States helped Afghan Sunni militants by supporting Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, who were against Iran as well as the Soviet Union, and the final result was the creation of the Taliban.”

The dispute is also an obstacle to any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Barry said.

“It is evident that part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon policy “is to worsen Iran-US” relations, he said, adding, “and I condemn this”.

“The dispute between Iran and the United States is at the heart of all the tragedies in the Middle East, whether it is Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Palestine issue”, Barry said.

Born in New York, Barry, 53, studied at the universities of Princeton, New Jersey, and Cambridge, England, before working as a researcher, teacher and human rights activist in France.

An expert on Afghanistan and fluent in the country’s two main languages, barry headed a humanitarian mission to that country by the French organisation Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.—dpa/AFP