Barzani Says U.S. Sought to Capture
Revolutionary Guard Officials in Irbil Raid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 6, 2007
BAGHDAD – American forces who captured five Iranians in the northern city of
Irbil three months ago were really after commanders of Iran's Revolutionary
Guards who were visiting Kurdish officials, the Kurdish leader said in remarks
broadcast Saturday.
Massoud Barzani, president of the 15-year-old
Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, told Al-Arabiyah television that the
Iranian commanders first visited Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in the northern
city of Selaimani and then went to visit him. Barzani did not say where he met
the commanders, although he was thought to have been in Irbil at the time.
He also did not say how he knew U.S. forces
were trying to capture the commanders or where they were when the Americans
raided a house in Irbil on Jan. 11 and detained the five Iranians, who still are
in U.S. custody. Irbil is the capital of the Kurdish region.
“It (the house) was not a secret Iranian
office. It is impossible for us to accept that an Iranian office in Irbil was
doing things against coalition forces or against us. That office was doing its
work in a normal way and had they been doing anything hostile, we would have
known that,” Barzani said.
“They did not come to detain the people in that
office. There was an Iranian delegation, including Revolutionary Guards
commanders, and they came as guests of the president. He was in Selaimani They
came to Selaimani and then I received a call from the president's office telling
me that they wanted to meet me as well.”
U.S. Defense Department officials in Baghdad
did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail requests for comment.
Washington has said the five captured Iranians
were rounded up on suspicion they were providing aid to Shiite militia fighters
who are targeting U.S. and Iraqi troops and civilians.
“They (the commanders) came here and they came
openly. Their meetings with the president and myself were reported on
television. The Americans came to detain this delegation, not the people in the
office,” he said. “They came to the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“The only place where there is no Iranian
influence is Irbil. I will never allow such influence in Kurdistan, whether
Iranian or otherwise,” Barzani added.
On Wednesday, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen.
William Caldwell said an International Committee of the Red Cross delegation
including one Iranian had visited the captive Iranians.
But on Friday, the U.S. military issued a
statement clarifying that there were no Iranians in the ICRC team that had
visited the five Iranians. Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman,
issued the clarifying statement in an e-mail statement to The Associated Press.
“The ICRC committees that visited the five
Iranians detained in Irbil on two occasions did not contain an Iranian national.
One of the two committees contained an individual who speaks Farsi and lived in
Iran, but he is a British citizen by birth,” Garver said.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said the
United States was still considering an Iranian government request to visit the
five.
