Prometheus 6

"You can go and find a list of suspected terrorists held in Iraqi prisons. You will definitely find out that no Iranian is among them," Kazemi-Qomi said, adding that few of them are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, which are on Iran's eastern border. "I regret to tell you that the majority of these suspects come from Arab countries."

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ: COLD SHOULDER FOR U.S.
Iran forging ahead in Iraq without U.S.
Tehran's ambassador in Baghdad sees no need to talk with Americans about how to stabilize the war-torn nation.
By Borzou Daragahi
Times Staff Writer
December 22, 2006

BAGHDAD — Tehran's top envoy here said there was no need for contacts with the United States aimed at stabilizing Iraq, saying that Iranians already were pursuing channels to help secure their embattled neighbor.

Ambassador Hassan Kazemi-Qomi brushed aside recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, that the Bush administration speak to Tehran about the chaos in Iraq.

"We don't need a Mr. Baker-style proposal calling for Iran to talk with the United States about Iraq," Kazemi-Qomi said in an interview this week. "We have our own well-defined policies about Iraq. We have never waited for a Mr. Baker or someone else to offer talks."

Washington and Tehran broke formal diplomatic ties after Iranian radicals stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled the country's pro-U.S. monarch and brought to power the world's first Shiite Muslim theocracy.

U.S. officials have accused Iran's government of destabilizing Iraq by providing arms, training and money to Shiite militias considered to be leading players in the civil war gripping Iraq's central provinces.

Told of Kazemi-Qomi's remarks, a State Department official in Washington accused Tehran of duplicity.

"It's not unusual for the Iranians to say all the right things, but at the same time engage in activities that are problematic, and certainly not what we would hope to see from a country expressing a desire for good neighborly relations," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.