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Tuesday, January 7, 1997

* "Either you're with us, or..."
* Tourism: A question of hospitality
* Satellite dishes: "Great risk"
* Iran's foreign debt decreases
* U.S.-Iran: prisoners of oratory
* Afkhami on Women's rights in Muslim societies
* Mojahedin: "Never managed to win an American embrace"
* Bosnia: "Iranian funds for education"

From: Reza F. Bourghani <davood@ix.netcom.com>

Tehran staged reappearance of missing Iranian writer: opponent Agence France-Presse 12/31/96

BONN, Dec 31 (AFP) - Iranian author Faraj Sarkoui, who disappeared in Tehran in November causing widespread concern among German legislators, was held by the Iranian regime, his colleague, government opponent Abbas Maroufi, said.

Sarkoui's reapparance was "a badly staged" farce enacted by the Tehran regime, in what appears to be a political climbdown, Maroufi said in an interview published by the Berlin daily Tageszeitung on Tuesday.

Maroufi, who is living in exile in Germany, called on the German government to abandon its policy of "critical dialogue" with the Iranian government, in view of Tehran's hard-line Islamic stance and to press for an end to censorship.

Sarkoui, editor-in-chief of the monthly Adineh (Friday), disappeared at Tehran airport on November 3 as he was to take a plane to visit his family in Germany. He re-emerged on December 20 at the same airport, giving a news conference and explaining that he had been in Germany, according to German and Iranian news reports.

As no German immigration visa was stamped in his passport, he said he had returned via the Netherlands, Turkey and Turkmenistan, the Tageszeitung said.

In several telephone calls to his parents he reportedly said that he wanted to leave Iran but was prevented from doing so.

"If I was Sarkoui, I would have said whatever they wanted me to say," Maroufi said, adding that interrogations by Iranian authorities were among the worst experiences of his life.

Maroufi said Sarkoui was among the "more anarchist" of a group of 134 writers who signed an appeal in 1994 for free speech in Iran.

Among the signatories was Ghaffar Hosseini who was found dead at his apartment in December, according to Maroufi. In the interview Maroufi said he saw himself as a moderate in the group of 134.

But for Tehran "there is only black or white -- either you're with us, or you're our enemy," he said. fb/gk/gd

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From: Reza F. Bourghani <davood@ix.netcom.com>

Reporter's Notebook: Iran Welcomes Western Tourists -- Almost

By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
Jan 1, 1997

ISFAHAN, Iran -- Isfahan, wrote Jean Chardin, the 17th-century French traveler, "was expressly made for the delights of love."

With its richly decorated domes and lush gardens, the royal city is a sensual delight, a place where shifting light and shadow caress the turquoise-and-cream-colored tiles of the mosques and where long arcades and soaring vaults spellbind even the most jaded tourist.

It is the splendor of Persian treasures like Isfahan, 200 miles south of Tehran, that Iran has begun to use to lure foreign tourists into the country.

As part of its campaign, Iran announced last August that it would issue visas within 24 hours to foreigners seeking to visit the country. Even Americans, with a bit of persistence and pull, can get a visa within two weeks, although the State Department's official warning on Iran urges Americans to stay out "because of the generally anti-American atmosphere and Iranian government hostility to the U.S. government."

But nearly a generation after the ayatollahs seized the palaces of kings, Iran is still locked in a fierce and bitter struggle over how hospitable it should be to the non-Muslim world...

***

To see full text, search it at:

//www.nytimes.com

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From: Reza F. Bourghani <davood@ix.netcom.com>

Mansoor Farhang's letter to The Washington Post
Saturday, January 4 1997; Page A20

Regarding The Post's article on the Voice of America's call-in television program to Iran [Diplomatic Dispatches, Dec. 20], it is worth noting that Iranian viewers watch the show at great risk to their safety. Iran's rulers outlawed possession of satellite dishes a year ago, but they were not vigilant in enforcing it...

***

To see full text of the letter, go to:

//www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/displaySearch?WPlate+44146+%28iran%29%3Adescription%26and%2619970102%3Cevent%5Fdate

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From: Reza F. Bourghani <davood@ix.netcom.com>

From wire services
01/02/97

TEHRAN - Iran has paid back 3.4 billion dollars of its foreign debt and owes about 20.36 billion dollars more, a government newspaper reported Thursday.

The daily Iran, citing the central bank, said the country also faced a "financial commitment" of around 13 billion dollars up to September 1996, which consisted of goods and services purchased but not yet received.

The bank said in August that Iran planned to reimburse all of its foreign debt by the the year 2003.

Iran sharply curbed imports two years ago to save hard currency to pay back the debt. Of the standing debt, 5.67 billion is short term and the rest medium or long term.

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From: Reza F. Bourghani <davood@ix.netcom.com>

In World Flux, a Constant: U.S. And Iran Still Foes

By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
Sunday, Dec 29, 1996

TEHRAN, Iran -- In the heart of Tehran's business district, the 27-acre compound that once was the U.S. Embassy sits as a little-noticed monument to the most radical time in Iran's revolution, a time when anti-American fever ran so high that young militants held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

With its football field, swimming pool and tennis courts the compound still looks like a small college campus, and for years it has served as a school for Iran's Revolutionary Guards. They take their courses in the two-story chancery building and practice their drills in the parking lot.

Outside the compound, where demonstrators once shouted for "Death to America," passers-by pay scant attention to the huge anti-American slogans painted on the embassy's outer wall.

Since the founding of Iran's Islamic Republic in 1979 and President Carter's breaking of diplomatic relations over the seizure of the hostages, the Cold War has ended and the world's strategic balances have shifted. But one constant remains.

Although revolutionary fervor has waned, Iran still officially regards the United States as its greatest enemy. And both countries are prisoners of oratory that has left them unable to make any conciliatory gesture toward the other...

***

To see full text, search it at:

//www.nytimes.com

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From: Reza F. Bourghani <davood@ix.netcom.com>

A Manual on Rights of Women Under Islam

By BARBARA CROSSETTE
The New York Times
Sunday, Dec 29, 1996

For several years, an informal group of Muslim women from around the world has met to spur discussion among Muslims everywhere about the rights of women. Now, with the shadow of a repressive Islamic regime in Afghanistan hovering over the debate, the group has produced a manual on the rights of women under Islam.

Intended to be adaptable to a wide range of cultures at the grass-roots level, the new publication, "Claiming Our Rights: A Manual for Women's Human Rights Education in Muslim Societies," will be tested over the next year in five very different countries: Bangladesh, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia and Uzbekistan.

The plan is to assemble discussion groups to exchange ideas on the subject. There has already been a quiet trial run among a group of university women in Iran.

"There is a great change in self-awareness among women in Muslim societies," said Mahnaz Afkhami, executive director of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, a private organization based in Bethesda, Md.

Ms. Afkhami directed the effort on the manual, which the institute produced with the help of the National Endowment for Democracy and the Ford Foundation...

***

To see full text, search it at:

//www.nytimes.com

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From: Reza F. Bourghani <davood@ix.netcom.com>

Mullahs, Beware: The Women Are Armed and Dangerous
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
December 30, 1996

CAMP ASHRAF, Iraq -- In this enclave of Iraq, the road signs are in Persian and the soldiers pay tribute not to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein but to an Iranian woman they call Maryam.

"She is the symbol of our struggle," veiled young women chanted after storming into a fortified bunker in a military training exercise.

"She is the tip of the arrow," proclaimed another, a gunner in a Soviet-made tank.

By the map, Camp Ashraf lies in Iraq, 60 miles north of Baghdad. But a more accurate description would be the military headquarters of Iran-in-exile, and a place unto itself.

The sprawling camp is home to the leadership of the National Liberation Army, a formidable Iranian opposition force. It is also home to unfathomable devotion toward the 43-year-old woman her disciples say should be Iran's next leader.

"We love Maryam Rajavi," men in camouflage dress chanted after braving a pool of fire in an exercise of their own. "And we promise to take her to Tehran."

Built up on a barren salt plain beginning about a decade ago, the army, now some 30,000 strong, is by any measure the best-armed opposition force poised outside any country's borders...

Yet despite an aggressive public-relations campaign, it has never managed to win an American embrace. In a report two years ago, the State Department cited the organization's past Marxist leanings and allegations that elements of the council took part in violent attacks against Americans in the early 1970s, and concluded that it did not represent an acceptable alternative to the current government of Iran.

That American report also labeled the group as "undemocratic," criticized its reliance on hospitality of the Iraqi government, and warned that its "authoritarian leadership" had created "a personality cult..."

***

To see full text, search it at:

//www.nytimes.com

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From: Reza F. Bourghani <davood@ix.netcom.com>

From wire services
01/03/97

SARAJEVO, Jan 3 - The party headed by Bosnia's Moslem President Alija Izetbegovic confirmed Friday it had received 500,000 dollars from Iran ahead of elections last year but denied the money was used in the campaign.

The Los Angeles Times, citing classified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents, reported Tuesday that Iran gave the president and head of the ruling Party of Democratic Action (SDA) at least 500,000 dollars for the election in September.

The newspaper said Izetbegovic received at least two suitcases each packed with around 250,000 dollars in weeks leading up to the vote and CIA analysts in their classified report said he had been "co-opted by the Iranians" and is now "literally on their payroll".

The SDA said in a statement it had received the money.

"We did indeed received 500,000 dollars in mid-1996, which was used for study grants. The money was collected in several Iranian towns," the party said in a statement.

The statement added "all aid is welcome and the party will not refuse it."

On Tuesday, State Department spokesman John Dinger said that Washington was satisfied that Bosnia was severing its links with Iran, which US officials have worked hard to isolate.

"We remain watchful over Iranian activity in Bosnia," Dinger told reporters in Washington. "We take the question of improper Iranian action seriously."

"It appears to us that he (Izetbegovic) recognizes that his relationship with the United States is far more important to Bosnia than the relationship with Iran," one US official said.

US President Bill Clinton's administration late last year agreed to release 100 million dollars worth of US military aid to Bosnia, aimed at boosting the defences of the Moslem and Croat federation in Bosnia against the hardline Bosnian Serbs.

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