Europe Opts for Mild Response to Iran

Brushing off U.S. pressure to get tough with Iran after its leaders were implicated in political murder by a German court, European Union ministers on Tuesday ordered mild sanctions but did nothing to reduce two-way trade now worth more than $10 billion a year.

“You cannot reproach us for following our economic interests,” said German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel.

Meeting in Luxembourg, Kinkel and his counterparts from 14 other European countries also agreed that ambassadors withdrawn from Iran earlier this month could return as soon as Tuesday night, European Commission sources said.

The United States, which deems Iran a terrorist state and broke off diplomatic relations in 1980, has been trying to get European countries to join its campaign to isolate Tehran’s Islamic regime politically and economically.

Europe has countered over the past five years with its own approach of “critical dialogue”--profitable trade mixed with regular political meetings to try to improve human rights in Iran and coax its leadership to relinquish alleged support for terrorism--which the Europeans say is far likelier to influence Iranian behavior.

“Not to talk, that is to isolate Iran--and that doesn’t appear to be the right thing,” French Prime Minister Alain Juppe said Tuesday in Paris.

Europe’s approach was thrown into disarray April 10 by the sensational finding of a German court, which ruled that Iranian leaders directly ordered the 1992 assassination of four Kurdish dissidents in a Berlin restaurant.

The verdict sparked the greatest crisis in European-Iranian relations since the 1989 Iranian religious edict calling for the murder of British novelist Salman Rushdie as an alleged blasphemer. In its wake, all the EU countries except Greece recalled their ambassadors from Tehran and suspended the “critical dialogue.”

The Clinton administration, which slapped a total embargo on trade with Iran in June 1995, lobbied energetically for the Europeans to take harsh measures in their turn. Over the weekend, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wrote to European governments, while last week, her former undersecretary for political affairs, Peter Tarnoff, toured European capitals.

However, the ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, could find the necessary unanimity only on a series of relatively mild measures, including a continued freeze on “critical dialogue.”

They ordered an end to bilateral visits at the ministerial level with Iran and pledged to cooperate to expel Iranian agents from Europe and deny entry visas to Iranians working in intelligence and security. The embargo on arms sales to Iran will continue, the ministers said.

Perhaps most significantly, the Europeans stipulated that there could be better relations with Iran only if “Iranian authorities respect the norms of international law and refrain from acts of terrorism, including against Iranian citizens living abroad, and cooperate in preventing such acts.”

“This is a firm declaration, but not a declaration of war,” Ramon de Miguel, Spain’s secretary of state for foreign affairs, told reporters.

Ibrahim Karawan, head of the Middle East program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, disagreed, calling the EU’s measures “very close to what the Americans call ‘a slap on the wrist.’ ”

“There is an element of verbal acrobatics to make it seem like enough to satisfy people who wanted strong action, but not enough to really endanger economic interests,” Karawan said in a telephone interview.

In Washington, the administration depicted the EU action as at least a partial victory for the U.S. policy of isolating Iran. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns declared flatly: “The ‘critical dialogue’ is dead.”

“Obviously, we would have preferred if the Europeans had included the threat of additional economic sanctions in case Iranian behavior does not improve,” Burns said. “But I think we have to be realistic. . . . This is certainly preferable to where we were with the Europeans just a couple of weeks ago.”

Outside the building in Luxembourg where the ministers met, 1,000 Iranian exiles gathered in the rain to demand a total break of diplomatic and trade ties with Iran. The National Council of Resistance, an Iranian opposition umbrella group, claimed Iranian leaders had murdered 376 people abroad in the past two years.

EU spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori said that despite the urging from Washington, the ministers at no time discussed potential economic sanctions. Last year, a law sponsored by Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) sought to deprive Iran and Libya, also accused by the United States of sponsoring terrorism, of investment in their oil and gas sectors by threatening U.S. sanctions against any foreign energy companies involved.

“We must not cut all the bridges with Tehran,” said Germany’s Kinkel, whose country did $1.2 billion in two-way trade with Iran last year--more than any other EU member. Because of “critical dialogue,” Kinkel said, Iran was persuaded to join the global treaty against the proliferation of chemical weapons and to assist in the return of dead Israeli soldiers from Lebanon.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this story.