No Substance to U.S. Charges, Iran’s President Says

By Ali Akbar Dareini

Iran on Monday rejected U.S. accusations that the highest levels of Iranian leadership have armed Shiite militants in Iraq with armor- piercing roadside bombs.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised interview that his country was opposed to conflict and bloodshed in Iraq and that problems in Iraq should be solved with dialogue, not by force.

“We shy away from any kind of conflict, any kind of bloodshed,” Ahmadinejad told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”"As we have said repeatedly, we think that the world problems can be solved through dialogue, through the use of logic and a sense of friendship. There is no need for the use of force.”

The highly sophisticated weapons are known as “explosively formed penetrators,” or EFPs, and have killed more than 170 troops from the U.S.-led coalition. Three senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad said Sunday the “machining process” used in the construction of the deadly bombs had been traced to Iran.

But Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Iran’s top leaders were not intervening in Iraq and considered “any intervention in Iraq’s internal affairs as a weakening of the popular Iraqi government, and we are opposed to that.”

“Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable,” Hosseini told reporters in Tehran.

The White House on Monday did not back down from its allegations, saying it was confident the report about the weapons flow from Iran to Iraq was accurate.

“This is providing . . . evidence to the effect that there’s been the shipment of weaponry, lethal weaponry into Iraq, some of it of Iranian providence,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

However, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that he has no information indicating the Iranian government is directing the supply of lethal weapons to Shiite insurgent groups in Iraq.

“We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran,” Pace told the Voice of America during a visit to Australia. “What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows about this.”

Ahmadinejad dismissed the allegations about Iran sending weapons to Iraq as “pieces of paper” that don’t prove the claims, emphasizing instead that Iran’s security was dependent on Iraq’s stability.

“Our position regarding Iraq is very clear. We are asking for peace. We’re asking for security. And we will be sad to see people get killed, no matter who they are,” he said.

On another issue, Hosseini said Iran was ready to negotiate with the international community over its nuclear program but would not agree to the precondition that it suspend uranium enrichment first.

The U.S. and its allies accuse Iran of secretly developing atomic weapons, but Iran says its program is solely for nuclear energy.

President Bush sought to dampen speculation about a U.S. military strike on Iran.

Bush, in an interview at the White House with C-SPAN, dismissed talk of a U.S. military strike on Iran as political chatter. He also said there is still a chance to resolve, through diplomacy, the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Still, Bush called Tehran a “belligerent” regime with nuclear ambitions that will lead Iranians into isolation.

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