WASHINGTON, July 19: US President George Bush said on Monday that the United States was investigating whether Iran played any role in the Sept 11, 2001, attacks, amid CIA scepticism of an official link.
"As to direct connections with Sept 11, we're digging into the facts to determine if there was one," Mr Bush said during a meeting with Chilean President Ricardo Lagos in the Oval Office.
His comments came after the acting director of the US Central Intelligence Agency said some of the hijackers who carried out the attacks passed through Iran, but that Washington had no evidence that Tehran backed the strikes.
"Acting Director (John) McLaughlin said there was no direct connection between Iran and the attacks of Sept 11. We will continue to look and see if the Iranians were involved," said Mr Bush.
The US president, who two years ago lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea in an "axis of evil", also urged Tehran to give up its alleged quest for nuclear weapons and cut off any support for groups Washington has branded terrorists.
"They've got to stop funding terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah that create great dangers in parts of the world," said Mr Bush, who branded Iran a "totalitarian society" with a poor human rights record.
Mr Bush also said Iran was "harboring Al Qaeda leadership" and demanded that those members of Osama bin Laden's network be handed over to their country of origin. And the president took a hard line on Iran's atomic ambitions, saying: "They've got a nuclear weapons program that they need to dismantle. We're working with other countries to encourage them to do so."
Washington has long dismissed Tehran's contention that it is pursuing a civilian nuclear power programme, saying that the country is using those efforts as a cover for a weapons programme.
Mr Bush's warnings to Iran came a day after Mr McClaughlin, who took over after George Tenet's departure earlier this month, told Fox News on Sunday that about eight of the Sept 11 hijackers passed through Iran.
"This is not surprising to us. I think the count is about eight of the hijackers were able to pass through Iran at some point," he said. "However, I would stop there and say we have no evidence that there is some sort of official sanction by the government of Iran for this activity.
We have no evidence that there is some sort of official connection between Iran and 9/11," he said. His remarks were the first official confirmation of leaked accounts from the final report of the official inquiry into the 2001 attacks, which is due to be released on Thursday.
Iran has said that suspected Al Qaeda members involved in the attacks may have passed through its territory, but insisted they would have done so "illegally". "We have very long borders and it is impossible to totally control them," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters in Tehran on Sunday.
"It is natural that five of six people could have crossed our borders illegally without us seeing them," he insisted. "The same thing happens on the border between the United States and Mexico."
Iran condemned the 2001 attacks, but has often been accused of harboring Al Qaeda members. In February, Spain's top anti-terror judge, Baltasar Garzon, alleged that Al Qaeda had a "board of managers" operating in Iran. -AFP
