December 11, 2002	Wednesday	Shawwal 6, 1423

TEHRAN: Despite desperate efforts to remain diplomatically neutral and avoid unnecessary remarks on the post-Saddam Hussein era in Iraq, Iran has nevertheless agreed to host a summit of Iraqi opposition groups in Tehran.

Present in the Iranian capital are Massoud Barezani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), Jalal Talebani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Ayatollah Mohammad-Baqer Hakim of the Shia Islamic group SAIRI and Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress (INC).

The summit — and especially the presence in it of Chalabi, the choice favoured by the United States in a future Iraq — indicates Iran’s willingness not to miss the slightest development in the event of a regime change in its western neighbourhood.

“Iraq is another story (from Afghanistan)”, said Mohsen Mirdamadi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s foreign policy commission. “Our interests over there are much more vital than those in Afghanistan”.

If a pro-American administration replaced the Saddam Hussein regime, Iran would not only be strategically surrounded by its arch- enemy but economically, as Iraq’s future oil policies might affect the Islamic state which is dependent on its oil revenues.

Reformists blame the foreign ministry for the diplomatic masterpiece of having landed in the US “axis of evil” despite Iran’s having suffered from the Taliban regime and its associate Al Qaeda network more than any other country before the September 11 attacks.

In August 1998, Taliban agents killed nine Iranian diplomats and one journalist following the takeover of Iran’s consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The incident almost led to war but was eventually defused through United Nations mediation.

“If we do not act preventively in Iraq, then we will not only remain in the ‘axis of evil’ but might also become the US’s next target after Iraq,” warned Mirdamadi, who is also a senior member of the leading reformist party Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF).

Reformists demand a wiser policy on Iraq, which waged a devastating eight-year war (1980-88) on Iran costing the country the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and material damages according to their own estimates of a trillion dollars. Their wish for the Iraqi leader’s overthrow is therefore an open secret.

“Saddam’s fall, through whatever means, would be the happiest day for the Iranian nation,” said IIPF head Mohammad-Reza Khatami, who is also the younger brother of President Mohammad Khatami.

Also parts of the conservative opposition in the country wish Saddam’s fall, but justify his regime’s estimate with concern for Iraqi Muslims.

“If the US enabled the formation of a popularly acknowledged administration that looked after the welfare of the people in Iraq, then we would have no problems (with the attack),” said former United Nations envoy Saaid Rajaie Khorassani.

The Iraqi opposition summit in Tehran indicates that even Iran has no major objections to seeing Baghdad’s Baath regime being toppled and would, however unintentionally, stand in line with the policies of its rival, the United States.

Despite Tehran’s constant refusal to allow American fighters to use its airspace, reports on this subject continue with reformists calling on the administration to consider national interests over anti-US cliches.

The two Kurdish groups KDP and PUK are the indisputable powers in the autonomous North Iraq, while the influence in the south of Ayatollah Hakim’s Tehran-based SAIRI — Iran’s ideal choice — cannot be ignored even by the United States.

Together with the INC, the groups in Tehran are expected to have a major say in Iraq’s post-Saddam scenario, a fact of which Tehran is aware as it avails itself of the opportunity to hold political and military talks before the main Iraqi opposition meeting on Friday in London.

The Iranians currently are only flirting with Iraqi opposition groups, but the more concrete a possible US attack gets, the more serious the love affair will become, remarked a Western diplomat in Tehran.—dpa