Iran Rejects Arab Call for Cease-Fire

Iran’s prime minister today rejected an Arab League call for a cease-fire and vowed that the war against Iraq will go on until “the complete suppression of the aggressor,” an official report said.

Iraq said its planes attacked another ship in the Persian Gulf off Iran, the sixth vessel Iraq has claimed to have attacked this week. Shipping sources confirmed that one tanker was hit Wednesday night.

Iraq’s state-controlled newspapers, meanwhile, termed the Arab League summit in Amman, Jordan, “historic, successful and great.”

The summit, called to seek concerted Arab action against Persian Iran to end the 7-year-old gulf war, concluded with unexpected unity and a strong condemnation of Tehran’s “intransigence, provocations and threats.”

Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi of Iran was quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency as claiming that decisions made at the four-day meeting, which ended Wednesday, were dictated by the United States. He termed the meeting a defeat for Arabs.

Iran is a Muslim nation but not Arab. Iranians are Persians.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry declared in a statement that the summit’s support for Iraq was “in line with the aggressive policies of the U.S.A. and Iran will give a suitable response to the threats of the American government and its dependents in the region.”

In the first official Iranian comment on the summit, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Moussavi said the “Iraqi-imposed war will be continued until the complete suppression of the aggressor.” The agency report was monitored in Cyprus.

The agency also quoted Moussavi as denouncing the summit’s move to allow Arab states to restore links with Egypt, which has been shunned by most Arab countries since it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

By permitting the restoration of relations with “the traitor regime of Egypt,” the summit “has in fact backed the Zionist regime,” Moussavi said.