24 September 2007Yahoo! NewsYahya Barzanji
Iran closed major border crossings with northern Iraq on Monday to protest the U.S. detention of an Iranian official the military accused of weapons smuggling, a Kurdish official said.
At least four border gates have been closed and one remains open, the governor of the Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, Dana Ahmed Majeed, told The Associated Press. The move threatens the economy of Iraq's northern region — one of the country's few success stories.
In Tehran, the public relations department in Iran's Interior Ministry said no decision had been taken to shut the border.
But Kurdish authorities said the Iranians began shutting down the crossing points late Sunday near the border towns of Banjiwin, Haj Omran, Halabja and Khanaqin.
The closings came four days after U.S. troops arrested an Iranian official during a raid on a hotel in Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad.
U.S. officials said he was a member of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that smuggles weapons into Iraq. But Iraqi and Iranian leaders said he was in the country on official business and with the full knowledge of the government.
"This closure from the Iranian side will have a bad effect on the economic situation of the Kurdish government and will hurt the civilians as well," said Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the autonomous Kurdish government. "We are paying the price of what the Americans have done by arresting the Iranian."
A U.S. military spokesman, Rear Adm. Mark Fox, also said Sunday that Iran has smuggled advanced weapons into Iraq for use against American troops, including the Misagh 1, a portable surface-to-air missile that uses an infrared guidance system and could threaten U.S. aviation.
Iran has denied U.S. allegations that it is smuggling weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, a denial that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday.
"We don't need to do that. We are very much opposed to war and insecurity," said Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York Sunday to attend the U.N. General Assembly. "The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests."
But the U.S. insists it has evidence to the contrary. On Monday, U.S. troops killed one suspected militant and detained four others said to be involved in kidnapping operations run by Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City, the military said.
The latest detention of an Iranian official also has taxed relations between Iraq and the United States, already strained after the shooting deaths of 11 civilians at Nisoor Square in Baghdad on Sept. 16 — allegedly at the hands of Blackwater USA security contractors.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said the Blackwater incident was among several "serious challenges to the sovereignty of Iraq" by the company, adding he would take the case up in discussions with President Bush in New York, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
Blackwater denies its guards fired illegally and says they were defending themselves from armed insurgents.
Al-Maliki also condemned the Iranian's arrest, saying he understood the man, who has been identified as Mahmudi Farhadi, had been invited to Iraq. U.S. officials said he was a member of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards accused of smuggling weapons into Iraq.
"The government of Iraq is an elected one and sovereign. When it gives a visa, it is responsible for the visa," al-Maliki told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday in New York. "We consider the arrest ... of this individual who holds an Iraqi visa and a (valid) passport to be unacceptable."
Last week, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, demanded the Iranian's release and warned in a letter to America's top commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, that Iran had threatened to close its border with Iraq's Kurdish region over the case.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday that Farhadi was in charge of border transactions in western Iran and went to Iraq on an official invitation.
The U.S. military said the suspect was being questioned about "his knowledge of, and involvement in," the transportation of EFPs and other roadside bombs from Iran into Iraq and his possible role in the training of Iraqi insurgents in Iran. No charges against the Iranian have been filed yet.
In more violence Monday, an Iraqi security guard was killed and three others were wounded when a car bomb exploded near the convoy of a local security official near the northern city of Kirkuk, police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir said.
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Associated Press writers Bushra Juhi and Hamid Ahmed in Baghdad contributed to this report.
