Iran Recalls Its Envoys in 12 European Nations

The government of Iran recalled its ambassadors from the countries of the European Community on Tuesday in response to united European action against Iran over a threat to kill novelist Salman Rushdie.

The 12 European Community members decided Monday in Brussels to recall their ambassadors from Iran because the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, has called for Rushdie to be killed for perceived offenses to Muslims in his novel “The Satanic Verses.”

Following the EC’s lead, Canada announced Tuesday it is withdrawing its charge d’affaires, its top official in Tehran, for consultations. Sweden and Norway, which are not members of the community, also recalled their ambassadors from Tehran on Tuesday.

Top Envoy Expelled

Britain on Tuesday ordered Iran’s top envoy expelled. “The government has concluded that in our own particular case, it is neither possible nor sensible to conduct a normal relationship with Iran,” Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe told Parliament.

Howe said that Iran has been asked to withdraw its charge d’affaires and the one other Iran-based member of its staff from London.

In Geneva, the International Publishers’ Assn. assailed the Iranian threat and urged its members to ask their governments to “denounce such behavior and to ensure the respect of constitutional rights and all international treaties which recognize the right to freedom of expression.”

In West Germany, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that a bilateral cultural exchange agreement signed with Iran last November will not be implemented because of Iran’s threat against Rushdie. The Bonn government said the agreement will go into effect when Iran withdraws the death threat.

Publishers across the Continent have canceled plans to publish the book, and it has been removed from the shelves of many bookstores in the United States and Japan.

Rushdie, who was born in India but is now a British citizen, has been in hiding and under police protection since Khomeini said last week that he should be killed for writing what many Muslims regard as a blasphemous book.

Rushdie issued a carefully worded apology Saturday, saying he regrets the “distress” that publication of the novel has caused to followers of Islam.

But Khomeini said that no matter what Rushdie does to make amends, it is every Muslim’s duty to “send him to hell.”

It was this unrelenting Iranian position that prompted the European Community nations to recall their ambassadors. The members of the European Community are Britain, West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal.

IRNA, the official Iranian news agency, said that a group of Islamic scholars in Tehran known as the Ulema had called on the government to make a complete diplomatic break with Britain. The British government only recently reopened its embassy in Tehran. The United States has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

The crisis over the Rushdie book has succeeded in reversing a carefully nurtured move by Iran’s so-called pragmatist leadership to restore the country to international acceptability after Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq.

The Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who in the past has been one of the loudest voices in favor of moderation, appeared to be taking pains to be seen as supporting Khomeini.

“We do not fear any such threats, and we are prepared to follow our own path at any costs,” Rafsanjani told Parliament. He added that the European Community action was proof that the issue of the Rushdie book “is a plot designed by Western imperialism to fight true Islam.”

There has been considerable speculation in the Middle East that the uproar over “The Satanic Verses” may mean that Iranian officials identified as pragmatists are heading for a period in the political wilderness after shepherding the country to a cease-fire with Iraq.

Many officials believe that Khomeini, the supreme arbiter of life in Iran, would not have gotten involved in the Rushdie affair unless he had been provoked by one or more of Iran’s more radical leaders who hope to halt the country’s move toward liberalization and an opening to foreign investment.

Among the radical political figures in Iran who oppose greater ties with the West is Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi, whose political fortunes appeared to have foundered last year when he tried to resign from the government.

On Tuesday, Moussavi was quoted as saying that the European Community decision on Iran was “a useless maneuver certain to harm the European Community rather than Iran.”

The Europeans had been eager to take part in the multibillion-dollar reconstruction program to restore Iran’s war-shattered economy.

The controversy over the Iranian death threat has silenced criticism of the book in much of the rest of the Muslim world. Most Arab newspapers have published only factual accounts of the conflict without taking a position.

The book, which Muslims consider blasphemous for suggesting that the Prophet Mohammed was fallible, is unavailable in the Muslim world except for a few smuggled copies.