[Mb-civic] FW: Iran spent over $1 billion on meddling in Iraq: Defence Minister

[Golsorkhi]

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From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 19:23:45 -0500
Subject: Iran spent over $1 billion on meddling in Iraq: Defence Minister


Iran spent over $1 billion on meddling in Iraq: Defence Minister

Monday, 17th January 2005


Iran Focus

Baghdad, Jan. 17 - The Iraqi Defence Minister, Hazem al-Shaalan today
accused Iran of interference, saying, "Iran has spent more than $1
billion on meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq".

In a telephone interview with the Arab language Ilaf website,
al-Shaalan also accused candidates on the opposition list of Shiite
figures led by Abdol Aziz Hakim as a group trying to invite sectarian
and religious strife among the people of Iraq.

He blasted Ahmad Chalabi, the disgraced Iraqi opposition candidate who
was discovered to be secretly passing on U.S. intelligence to the
Iranian regime.

Al-Shaalan has repeatedly called Iran "Iraq's number one enemy" and
consistently accused the clerical state of funding insurgent attacks
against the Iraqi people.

Al-Shaalan had previously said that the reason Iraq¹s interim
deputy-Prime Minister, Barham Saleh, had been dispatched to Iran was to
warn Iran¹s leaders to halt their actions.

Over the past year, a string of Iraqi officials, including Iraq¹s
interim-Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi, and the interim-President Ghazi
al-Yawar, have accused Iran of meddling in Iraq. In December al-Yawar
accused Iran of pouring ³huge amounts of money² into fundamentalist
Shiite parties hoping to create an Iraqi Islamic Republic.

Separately, sources within the Iranian opposition yesterday confirmed
to Iran Focus that they were able to obtain a classified document from
within Iran's intelligence and security apparatus showing Iran's
connections to insurgents carrying out attacks in Iraq.

The document is a report written by an Iraqi group mounting armed
attacks on Iraqi civilians and U.S. and Coalition troops in Iraq. It
was addressed to Revolutionary Guards Brigadier General Obeydavi, a
senior commander of the Qods (Jerusalem) Force.

The Qods Force is the extra-territorial arm of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps and oversees the Iranian regime's external
military activities in Iraq.

The report described how attacks were "successfully carried out". It
acknowledged that the Iraqi group was primarily mounting attacks in
Baghdad and provinces to its west.

That report mentioned that the fatwa calling for the group to carry out
operation in Iraq was issued in Iran's holy city of Qom.
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URL:  http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1259


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