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Iran: U.S. failure behind Ahmadinejad accusations

Posted on: Saturday, 30 July 2005, 05:03 CDT

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said U.S. accusations that its President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had helped take dozens of U.S. diplomats hostage after the 1979 Islamic revolution were due to its failure to influence Iran and its elections.

The White House accuses Ahmadinejad of being a leader of the radical students who stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, but says it is still trying to determine if he was one of the hostage-takers that held 52 U.S. diplomats for 444 days.

Ahmadinejad, a conservative opposed to rebuilding ties with the United States, takes over as president next week.

"Such remarks in the run-up to the transfer of power in the Islamic Republic of Iran derive from U.S. disillusion with Iran's independent policies and our nation's ignoring the White House demand to boycott the elections," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement late on Friday.

The United States says the Islamic Republic is a state sponsor of terrorism and accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, charges Tehran strongly denies.

Ahmadinejad was the surprise winner of June elections which ended eight years of reformist government in Iran. The United States and Iranian opposition exiles called for a boycott of the polls, but turnout was still higher than 50 percent.

Iran denies Ahmadinejad had anything to do with the seizure of the embassy, known as the "nest of spies" in Iran.

A CIA analysis has concluded Ahmadinejad was not the man in photographs of a hostage-taker identified by former U.S. hostages as the newly elected Iranian leader and widely published in U.S. media last month.

"As expressed earlier and confirmed by American sources, the president-elect had no role in the incident at the nest of spies," Asefi said. "America's enormous security bodies are incapable of assessing simple, clear issues."

Former hostage-takers, many of them now mellowed into middle-aged reformists, also deny Ahmadinejad was among them.

Prominent hostage-taker Mohsen Mirdamadi, said Ahmadinejad was one of five student leaders who met to discuss whether to storm the U.S. embassy. But, he said, Ahmadinejad and another man spoke out against the idea.

"They suggested taking over the Soviet embassy instead," the official IRNA news agency quoted Mirdamadi as saying.

Source: REUTERS

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