In Afghanistan, Iranian Chides U.S.

In the first visit by an Iranian head of state to neighboring Afghanistan in 40 years, President Mohammad Khatami threw his support Tuesday behind the U.S.-backed government here but strongly criticized the American approach to the global war on terrorism.

Apparently referring to the ongoing hunt by U.S. troops for remnants of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces, Khatami said that the only justifiable reason for an international presence in Afghanistan now is to reconstruct the war-torn nation and that violence will lead only to more violence.

“America has come to a misunderstanding of its power and interests,” Khatami said at a news conference at Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s palace. “Their policy is wrong to control people by force, and this has always caused the ongoing terrorism.”

Khatami also confirmed a weekend report out of Saudi Arabia that Iran had handed over to their government 16 Saudi nationals suspected of being Al Qaeda members. And he indicated that Iran has deported Al Qaeda fighters to other countries.

“Even if we had just a little suspicion, we delivered them to their countries, and not just Saudi Arabia,” he said.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he could not confirm the report that Iran had turned over the suspects. He emphasized that Iran has so far refused to cooperate with the U.S. on apprehending terrorists.

“With respect to the terrorists that they say they’ve turned in, they’ve turned none in to us,” Rumsfeld said.

“There is no question but that they have permitted Al Qaeda to enter their country,” he added. “They are permitting Al Qaeda to be present in their country today, and it may very well be that they, for whatever reason, have turned over some people to other countries. But they’ve not turned any to us.”

Khatami also took the opportunity Tuesday to criticize the American government for harboring anti-Iranian activists, saying the United States is “where terrorists have been supported or at least kindly treated.”

For years, Washington allowed the Iranian opposition group Moujahedeen Khalq and its political party to have offices in the United States, despite the group’s alleged links to terrorism against the Tehran regime. The Clinton administration put the group on its terrorism list in the late 1990s.

“We have always fought terrorism, and our suffering from it goes back a lot farther than the United States’ suffering,” Khatami said. “Iran is no place for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.”

Karzai’s decision to play host to the Iranian leader represented an attempt by the new Afghan government to broaden relations with its neighbors. Last week, Karzai was host to India’s foreign minister. Karzai, an interim president elected by a tribal council in June, needs all the support he can get. Under the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime, Afghanistan had hostile relations with most of its neighbors save its patron, Pakistan.

Tehran in turn wants to build strong relations because of such shared interests as stemming the flow of narcotics from Afghanistan, which has spawned an estimated 2 million drug addicts in Iran. Tehran also wants to counter U.S. influence in the region. With the strong U.S. presence now in neighboring areas--including Central Asia, Pakistan and along the Persian Gulf coast--Iran increasingly feels surrounded.

On Tuesday, Karzai offered to smooth relations between Iran and the United States, which have been rocky for two decades and especially since President Bush called Iran part of an “axis of evil.” Afghanistan has in recent months become a place where American and Iranian diplomats have had contact on issues of common concern, according to U.S. officials.

It was a remarkable scene at the presidential palace as machine-gun-toting U.S. Special Forces soldiers assigned to protect Karzai mingled with Iranian intelligence police guarding Khatami.

In addition to bolstering Karzai’s tenuous grip on power, the Iranian president came to tout his nation’s commitment of $500 million in aid to the Afghan regime and to celebrate the restoration of good relations between the neighbors, who have been enemies for most of the last two decades.

Their relations sank as the Taliban attacked Afghanistan’s Shiite Muslims, who are a minority here but whose ethnic brethren make up the majority in Iran, said Teresita C. Schaffer, director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Most Afghans are Sunni Muslims.

After the Taliban killed eight Iranian diplomats and a journalist in 1998, the Tehran government briefly massed troops at the border and threatened to invade. During the civil strife that racked Afghanistan in the last half of the 1990s, Iran supported the eventually victorious Northern Alliance faction against the Taliban.

Outwardly, relations between the nations’ leaders now seem warm. Khatami’s visit was to reciprocate for a trip Karzai made to Iran in the spring. Khatami promised Tuesday not to meddle in Afghan affairs--an apparently oblique reference to many other nations’ inability to resist trying to remake Afghanistan.

“It’s in Iran’s interest to see Afghanistan stabilize and not be a focal point for radiating instability,” Schaffer said.

Iran has pledged to underwrite the cost of a new 70-mile road and a bridge connecting the western Afghan city of Herat to the Iranian border. In addition, it has promised to donate 50 buses, along with electric power and transmission lines. Khatami also said his nation would award thousands of scholarships to Afghans to study in Iran.

“It’s time to compensate Afghanistan for all its suffering, and this can come only through the cooperation of the international community,” the Iranian leader said.

Iran’s promises come at a time when Japan and European countries are under fire for not delivering on pledges made in Tokyo early this year to provide about $2 billion in relief and development funds to Afghanistan, which is on the economic equivalent of life support.

With its industry shattered by two decades of war, the country has come to rely on Iran for consumer goods, medicines and gasoline. The Herat road will facilitate the transport of such goods.

A grateful Karzai acknowledged Iran’s support, citing cultural and linguistic affinities between the two “brother” countries.

Immigration, however, remains a sore point between them. During the civil war, about 2 million Afghans fled to Iran, and Khatami’s government would like many, if not all, to return to their homeland.

The United Nations said Sunday that some refugees in Iran are not being given a choice. The number of repatriations from Iran doubled last week over the week before, and many returnees reported being coerced to leave, the U.N. said.

Times staff writers Robin Wright and Esther Schrader in Washington contributed to this report.