February 17, 2003	Monday	Zul Hijjah 15, 1423

TEHRAN, Feb 16: Iran’s reformist parliament plans to impeach Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi over the country’s policy on Iraq, the official news agency IRNA reported on Sunday.

More than 100 out of 290 members of parliament have asked the speaker to impeach the minister over what the mainly reformist MPs term “inappropriate and unjustified policies” as they could eventually be interpreted worldwide as support for the Iraqi regime.

Now that the countdown to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has finally started, there was no reason to receive the Iraqi foreign minister in Tehran, the MPs said, referring to last week’s surprise visit by Naji Sabri to the Iranian capital.

The MPs told the foreign ministry that Iran should not become an instrument of Baghdad’s deceiving policies and to respect Iranian public opinion.

Accordingly, the presence of Sabri could not be accepted. His country had waged a deadly eight-year war on Iran for which Iraq has so far refused to even apologize as it did to Kuwait.

Kharrazi said Sunday that Sabri’s visit, his talks with British officials in London and the gathering of Iraqi opposition groups on Iranian soil were all signs of Iran’s neutrality in the current crisis.

Iran and Iraq were involved in an eight-year devastating war in which at least two hundred thousand Iranian troops were killed and a self-estimated damage of 1 trillion US dollars caused to the country.

In the final phase of the 1980-88 war, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces and civilians which killed or paralysed tens of thousands.

Internal Russian affair: Iran described the Chechnya issue as an internal affair of Russia and said that it hoped the crisis can be brought to a peaceful settlement.

Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters in Tehran that Chechen rebels should reach a settlement which recognises the territorial integrity of the Russian Confederation.

As far as Muslims in Chechnya are concerned, Iran has so far not exhibited the same engagement which the Muslim state has shown for Arab Muslim communities, a fact observers attribute to Iran’s desire to maintain ties with Moscow.

Iran was part of a delegation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) which went to Moscow in December 1999 to discuss the Chechnya crisis with Russian officials. However, all of the OIC’s proposals to prevent clashes between Russian forces and Chechen rebels were later ignored by Moscow.

HR: Iran said it would cooperate with a UN Human Rights Committee which arrived in Tehran for a 12-day visit to investigate possible human rights abuses in the country. A mutual plan had been agreed with the committee according to which the UN experts would work in Iran, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters.

The UN team, led by Louis Joinet from France, arrived in Tehran on Saturday and is scheduled to meet with hardliners in the judiciary and officials of the interior and foreign ministries.—dpa