US, Britain, Iran trade charges over attacks

By Paul Hughes and Saul Hudson

TEHRAN/LONDON (Reuters) – Iran said on Sunday Britain was
behind deadly bomb attacks in Iran, sharply raising tension
after Washington backed British charges that Tehran helped
Iraqi militants kill eight of its troops.

Five people were killed in twin bombings in southwest Iran
on Saturday.

“We are very suspicious about the role of British forces in
perpetrating such terrorist acts,” the ISNA student news agency
quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying.

“Our people are used to these kind of incidents, and our
intelligence agents found the footprints of Britain in the same
incidents before,” Ahmadinejad said during a cabinet meeting.

“We think the presence of British forces in southern Iraq
and near the Iranian border is a factor behind insecurity for
the Iraqi and Iranian people,” he added.

Britain, which has more than 8,000 troops in southern Iraq,
has denied any link with the two bombs in the oil city Ahvaz,
which injured more than 80, and with the string of attacks this
year in Khuzestan province, the center of Iran’s oil industry.

No one has claimed responsibility for the homemade bombs,
planted in garbage bins and detonated a few minutes apart.

Ahmadinejad’s remarks raised tension between Tehran and
London to new heights. Relations were already sensitive because
talks between Iran and Britain, France and Germany on Iran’s
controversial nuclear program broke down in August.

Britain and the United States have accused Iran or the
Tehran-backed Lebanese group Hizbollah of providing military
expertise to Iraqi insurgents behind attacks on British troops
in southern Iraq.

Iran denies meddling in Iraq and says the accusations
against it are psychological warfare tied to efforts by
Washington and London to report Tehran to the U.N. Security
Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear program.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said this month there was
evidence that Iran or Hizbollah was the source of sophisticated
technology used in roadside bombs, known as improvised
explosive devices (IEDs), used against British soldiers in
Iraq.

WARNING OVER IEDs

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday
that Washington had warned Tehran over the issue.

“We have tried to deliver a message … about this issue of
IEDs in southern Iraq,” Rice told reporters while in London for
talks with Blair. “We have channels with which to do it. But we
use them sternly and pretty specifically to deliver messages.”

The Iranian ambassador in London, Mohammed Hossein Adeli,
told BBC’s Radio 4 his country did not support the use of
violence against British troops in Iraq and said stability in
Iraq was in Iran’s best interest.

Adeli denied any suggestion Iran had supplied explosive
devices to Iraqi insurgents. “We have already rejected
categorically any link between Iran and the incidents that have
taken place with British troops,” he said.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, speaking separately
to BBC radio, said Britain had given Iran “evidence which in
our judgment clearly links the improvised explosive devices
which have been used against British and other troops mainly in
the south of Iraq to Hizbollah and Iran.”

“We look to the Iranians to desist from anything they have
been involved with in the past and to use their very
considerable influence with Hizbollah to ensure this continued
use … stops in Iraq.”

Hizbollah has also denied any links to the Iraq bombs.

Blair has said the Iraq bombings may have been an attempt
by Iran to intimidate Britain over its tough stance in talks to
limit Tehran’s use of nuclear technology.

Adeli, on the other hand, said it was suspicious that
charges of Iranian influence had arisen at this time. “This
leads us to at least think … this is used to put pressure on
Iran over nuclear matters.”

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Tehran)