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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Financial Times pooh-poohs Iran democracy initiative |
| 2006-02-22 |
| They're engaging in some revisionist history while doing so. The Iranian Komala is regarded by the real Kurdish commies as a sell-out to the CIA and is an offshoot of the Iranian branch of the Iraqi PKK, while the claim that the Baluchistan hard boyz are linked to al-Qaeda is pure Iranian spin - they're drug dealers and thugs working for the Baluch drug lord of the month, nothing more. Iranian leaders have dismissed the US administration’s proposal to allocate $75m for “promoting democracy” in Iran. Manouchehr Mottaki, foreign minister, has suggested the money would be better spent on investigating why “hatred of the US has increased throughout the world in recent years”. Such contempt derives both from the weakness of Iranian opposition groups and a sense democracy will not favour the US. “Everywhere in free elections, the Islamists and resistance groups are winning,” president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad said on Sunday. Khaled Mashaal, leader of Hamas, the militant Islamist group victorious in recent Palestinian elections, is using his current visit to Tehran to back Iran’s right to nuclear technology and to call for Muslim support for the Palestinians. Last week the Bush administration asked Congress for $75m to promote democratic change but Iran’s reformists - regrouping after election defeats - are loath to accept US money and argue US pressure strengthens militarism in Iran, where Mr Ahmadi-Nejad rides a popularity wave after his landslide win last June. Willing recipients for funding – including royalist exiles based mainly in Los Angeles – lack a presence in the country. The most determined opponents of the regime in Tehran may be in Iran’s ethnic minorities, who make up around half its 68m population, but even here the ground is unpromising for the US. The past week has seen renewed violence in Iran’s Kurdish region. The governor of Maku, a town close to the Turkish border, told Associated Press two demonstrators were killed on Friday during protests marking the 7th anniversary of the imprisonment in Turkey of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran and Komaleh are soon to launch satellite television stations - probably broadcasting from Europe - that might attract US funding. But the rise of Pejak, a group linked to the PKK, may be less to Washington’s taste. Likewise, in Sistan-Baluchestan, the restive province in Iran’s south-east, militant Sunni Muslim groups linked to al-Qaeda, one of which last year released a video of the beheading of an Iranian soldier, may not fit the US Congress’ model of ideal democrats. In the mainly Arab south-west province of Khuzestan, Iranian authorities have blamed a series of bombings, which have killed at least 20 people since last June, on Arab separatists. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |