Iran appeals to U.N. for talks

UNITED NATIONS -Iranian President Mohammad Khatemi, whose country stands on the brink of war with Afghanistan's dominant Taliban movement, appealed to the United Nations yesterday to bring all the feuding Afghan factions into negotiations to permit "the tyrannized and destitute Afghan people to freely determine their own destiny."

With 200,000 Iranian troops massed on the Afghan frontier, Khatemi spoke to the annual opening of the U.N. General Assembly as foreign ministers or their deputies from eight countries, including the United States, met on the sidelines here to seek ways of preventing the Afghan civil war from escalating into cross-border conflict with Iran.

AP PHOTO Iranian President Mohammad Khatami shakes hands with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, right, at the United Nations yesterday. Khatami said his country wants good relations with the outside world.

The meeting ended in agreement to ask Lakhdar Brahimi, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy, to go back to Afghanistan to seek ways of stimulating a dialogue and to call on the Taliban to permit an international investigation of the killing of Iranian diplomats and punish those responsible.

The desire for Afghan stability and animosity toward the Taliban, which seeks to impose an extremist Muslim theology on Afghanistan, has posed something of a uniting issue for the U.S. and Iranian governments after 19 years of mutual hostility. Yesterday's meeting provided the setting for one of the highest-level contacts between officials of both countries since relations were severed after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iran and the Taliban have serious theological differences that Iran claims have led to the Taliban killing and kidnapping Iranian citizens. The United States has opposed the Taliban's alleged involvement in drug trafficking, human rights violations and, most importantly, support of terrorism including the harboring of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi multimillionaire whom the United States blames for masterminding the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In retaliation, Washington launched cruise missile attacks last month against a Bin Laden base in Afghanistan.

But while there has been considerable speculation that the election of Khatemi, a moderate among the Shiite clerics who control Iran, might present an opportunity for improving relations, U.S. officials stressed that yesterday's events were concerned with Afghanistan and were not connected to any efforts to promote a Washington-Tehran dialogue.

09-22-98