Iran accuses UK in bomb attacks

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US, Britain, Iran trade charges over attacks
Sun Oct 16, 2005 10:28 PM ET
By Paul Hughes and Saul Hudson


TEHRAN/LONDON (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday Britain was behind deadly bomb attacks in Iran, sharply raising tension after Washington backed British charges that Tehran helped Iraqi militants kill eight of its troops.

Five people were killed in twin bombings in southwest Iran on Saturday.

"We are very suspicious about the role of British forces in perpetrating such terrorist acts," the ISNA student news agency quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying.

"Our people are used to these kind of incidents, and our intelligence agents found the footprints of Britain in the same incidents before," Ahmadinejad said during a cabinet meeting.

"We think the presence of British forces in southern Iraq and near the Iranian border is a factor behind insecurity for the Iraqi and Iranian people," he added.

Britain, which has more than 8,000 troops in southern Iraq, has denied any link with the two bombs in the oil city Ahvaz, which injured more than 80, and with the string of attacks this year in Khuzestan province, the center of Iran's oil industry.

No one has claimed responsibility for the homemade bombs, planted in garbage bins and detonated a few minutes apart.

Ahmadinejad's remarks raised tension between Tehran and London to new heights. Relations were already sensitive because talks between Iran and Britain, France and Germany on Iran's controversial nuclear program broke down in August.

Britain and the United States have accused Iran or the Tehran-backed Lebanese group Hizbollah of providing military expertise to Iraqi insurgents behind attacks on British troops in southern Iraq.

Iran denies meddling in Iraq and says the accusations against it are psychological warfare tied to efforts by Washington and London to report Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear program.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said this month there was evidence that Iran or Hizbollah was the source of sophisticated technology used in roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), used against British soldiers in Iraq. Continued ...

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WARNING OVER IEDs

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday that Washington had warned Tehran over the issue.

"We have tried to deliver a message ... about this issue of IEDs in southern Iraq," Rice told reporters while in London for talks with Blair. "We have channels with which to do it. But we use them sternly and pretty specifically to deliver messages."

The Iranian ambassador in London, Mohammed Hossein Adeli, told BBC's Radio 4 his country did not support the use of violence against British troops in Iraq and said stability in Iraq was in Iran's best interest.

Adeli denied any suggestion Iran had supplied explosive devices to Iraqi insurgents. "We have already rejected categorically any link between Iran and the incidents that have taken place with British troops," he said.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, speaking separately to BBC radio, said Britain had given Iran "evidence which in our judgment clearly links the improvised explosive devices which have been used against British and other troops mainly in the south of Iraq to Hizbollah and Iran."

"We look to the Iranians to desist from anything they have been involved with in the past and to use their very considerable influence with Hizbollah to ensure this continued use ... stops in Iraq."

Hizbollah has also denied any links to the Iraq bombs.

Blair has said the Iraq bombings may have been an attempt by Iran to intimidate Britain over its tough stance in talks to limit Tehran's use of nuclear technology.

Adeli, on the other hand, said it was suspicious that charges of Iranian influence had arisen at this time. "This leads us to at least think ... this is used to put pressure on Iran over nuclear matters."

[Don Corleone]

Here comes the Iran invasion