U.S. and Iran Agree on 2,000 Financial Claims : Diplomacy: The State Department confirms a tentative accord. About 200 disputes are still unresolved.

The United States and Iran have agreed tentatively to settle more than 2,000 financial disputes that have been a major irritant to relations between the countries since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the State Department said Wednesday.

The department issued a brief statement after Tehran Radio reported that U.S. and Iranian negotiators had reached agreement on a package to settle relatively small claims by Americans, mostly businessmen and other private citizens, against the Iranian government.

The department confirmed that the proposed settlement would result in a net payment of about $105 million to settle 2,370 claims by the United States and U.S. companies against Iran, and 108 Iranian claims for $400,000 against the United States. But it emphasized that nothing is final.

“We are very close to an agreement, but it hasn’t been signed (yet) because some important details remain to be settled,” the State Department announcement said.

A senior State Department official said that Tehran Radio had “jumped the gun” in saying that the matter was closed. But he said that he was encouraged by the Iranian announcement because it seems to signal a willingness by Iran to complete the negotiations.

“The United States is not counting its chickens until they hatch,” the official said. “It would be a very big breakthrough, but it is not final.”

The official, who declined to be identified by name, said that about 200 claims--including the biggest and most complex of them--remain to be resolved before Washington and Tehran can close the books on the financial consequences of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by Iranian militants after the overthrow of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

After the militants invaded the embassy and took more than 50 Americans hostage, the U.S. government broke off diplomatic relations and froze all Iranian assets in the United States. Iran asserts that the assets, including bank accounts and weapons bought by the shah’s government but never delivered, total between $10 billion and $12 billion when more than a decade of interest is added. U.S. officials say that the figure is less than a quarter of that amount.

In 1981, after the hostages were released in January, the two nations established a special tribunal at The Hague in the Netherlands to adjudicate financial claims that were left hanging. The United States has agreed to return to Iran any money left out of the frozen assets after all claims have been settled. Last November, the Bush Administration released $575 million that it said was in excess of the amount needed to settle the claims.

Both U.S. officials and Tehran Radio insisted that progress on the claims has nothing to do with the fate of Western hostages being held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon. Reports circulated in the Middle East earlier this month after the release of two American hostages that Washington had agreed to unfreeze the rest of the Iranian accounts. U.S. officials denied the rumors at the time.

Nevertheless, Iran has long maintained that all claims must be settled before there can be any sort of improvement in Washington-Tehran relations.

Tehran Radio quoted Ali Nobari, Iran’s representative to the tribunal, as saying that the agreement was reached “in the normal framework of the negotiations and has no relation with political and economic issues including, as Western media have said, the question of hostages.”

A State Department official said that if the agreement holds together, about 90% of all claims will have been settled, including a number that were decided earlier.

But he said the remaining claims--including most government-to-government disputes and most claims arising from the oil business--involve far more money. He declined to estimate the total amount left in dispute because the purpose of the tribunal is to set those dollar figures. But it seems certain that the sum is at least several hundred million dollars.

The senior official said that most of the claims involved in the tentative settlement are for $250,000 each or less. But he said that if each of the claims had been adjudicated separately, it might have taken 10 to 20 years to settle them all.

He said that it may be possible to settle all remaining claims in a year or two if negotiators maintain their present pace.

“The momentum is now there,” he said. “Both sides are more serious. It is quite clear that both governments have given the negotiators the authority to proceed at full speed.”

Meanwhile, the British news agency Reuters reported from Baalbek, Lebanon, that Iran’s top diplomat in Lebanon said three Iranians seized by a Christian militia in 1982 are still alive.

“We have information that the Iranian diplomats who were kidnaped in 1982 by the Lebanese Forces militia are still alive,” Mohammed Zamanian, Iran’s charge d’affaires in Lebanon, told reporters.

“Those who claim they are dead did not present any proof.”

BACKGROUND

The Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal is the only forum of official talks between the two nations. Ties were cut after American hostages were seized at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during Iran’s 1979 revolution. After their release, the tribunal was set up to resolve financial claims arising from that period. The tentative agreement would settle 2,478 small claims. Western analysts had suggested such a settlement to show goodwill toward Iran for its help in last month’s release of two U.S. hostages.