February 19, 2002	Tuesday	Zilhaj 6, 1422

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

TEHRAN, Feb 18: Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharazi said on Monday that exiled Afghan warlord Gulbadin Hekmatyar was free to leave Iran.

“If Mr Hekmatyar wants to leave, we will not stop him,” Mr Kharazi told a press conference a week after the Iranian authorities, accused by Washington of meddling in Afghanistan, closed the warlord’s local offices.

A spokesman for the Iranian interior ministry said at the time the government envisaged Mr Hekmatyar’s expulsion from the country.

Mr Hekmatyar, head of the Hizb-i-Islami party and a former prime minister, fought against the Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan in the 1980s, but in the civil war that followed Moscow’s pullout was vilified for reducing much of Kabul to ruins in a siege of the capital.

An opponent of both the former ruling Taliban and the opposition Northern Alliance, his calls for national unity after US attacks began against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda network on Oct 7 were disregarded.

He considered the Karzai government to have no legitimacy.

The closure of his offices followed accusations by the United States that Iran, though an ally of the Northern Alliance, was trying to destabilize the Karzai government.

RECONSTRUCTION: Iran has set up a special office to deal with the reconstruction of neighbouring Afghanistan, the official IRNA news agency reported on Monday.

The cabinet had approved a “headquarters for cooperation in Afghanistan’s reconstruction” to coordinate decisions emanating from President Mohammad Khatami and his government, IRNA said.—AFP