By NNN-KUNA
London : Iran is ready to help the US stabilise Iraq if Washington presents a timetable for a withdrawal of its troops, Tehran’s top security official has said.
In an interview with the Financial Times newspaper Monday, Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, which answers to Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, rejected Washington’s accusations that Tehran is providing weapons to Iraqi militias, insisting that the trouble with lies in the US Administration’s “dead-end strategy.”
Larijani maintained it was time world powers realised Iran’s nuclear progress could not be reversed and that they should enter into negotiations with Tehran without preconditions.
Pledging to continue cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, he made clear, however, that Iran would not suspend its uranium enrichment programme, a key UN Security Council demand, but he said he was open to “ideas being put on the table” in forthcoming talks with Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, to resolve the nuclear stand-off.
Larijani suggested that both the US Democratic party and the British were getting it right in Iraq.
The Democrats’ push for a timetable for withdrawal “seems to be logical”, he said, and the British were “more intelligent than the Americans”, having made the “necessary adjustments” and retreated to Basra airport.
“If they, the Americans, have a clear definition of a timetable, we’ll help them materialise it. If the US is persisting with its mistakes, it shouldn’t ask for help from us,” Larijani told the FT.
He said Iran had asked for names of Revolutionary Guard personnel that the US said were involved in helping Iraqi groups but that it had received no response.
Larijani also claimed Tehran had information that US officials were holding talks with Izzat al-Douri, the former Ba’athist senior official who is said to be leading parts of the Sunni insurgency.
“This is a disaster for the Iraqi people,” he added.