Iran demands Britain leave Basra
Blair rejects call, cites Iraqi support and UN mandate
BAGHDAD -- Iran's foreign minister yesterday demanded the immediate withdrawal of British forces from Basra, saying their presence had destabilized Iraq's second-largest city.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the demand and accused Iran of trying to divert attention from other issues, presumably its nuclear program. A Basra city spokesman said the departure of foreign troops ''is not in Iraq's interest now" because of the security situation.
''We believe that the presence of British forces in Basra has destabilized security in this city and has had some negative effects in the form of threats against southern Iran recently," Foreign Minister Manushehr Mottaki said during a visit to Beirut.
''The Islamic Republic of Iran demands an immediate withdrawal of British forces from Basra," he added. Basra, where most of Britain's more than 8,000 troops in Iraq are based, is about 20 miles west of the Iranian border.
Mottaki's call followed recent publicity surrounding last week's release of video images showing British soldiers beating Iraqi youths during a deadly January 2004 riot in Amarah, about 100 miles north of Basra.
On Tuesday, protesters marched on the British Consulate in Basra, shouted anti-British slogans and burned a British flag. Mottaki said the British forces had behaved in an ''inhuman and immoral manner that constituted a flagrant violation of human rights" against Iraqi youths.
During a visit to Germany, Blair said British troops were in Iraq under a UN mandate and with the consent of the Iraqi government and would remain as long as ''the Iraqi government wishes us to stay."
''What I would say to Iranians that there is no point in trying to divert attention from the issues to do with Iran by calling into question the British presence in Iraq which is there, as I say, with a United Nations mandate and Iraqi support," Blair said after talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.
Relations between British forces and local authorities in Basra have been strained for weeks after British attempts to crack down on Shi'ite militias, some of which have links to Shi'ite-dominated Iran and to major Shi'ite political parties in Iraq.
Last month, British soldiers arrested several police officers, accusing them of ties to Shi'ite militias and criminal gangs.
However, Nadim al-Jabiri, a spokesman for the Basra city council, said British forces were necessary to maintain security in the area.
''The withdrawal of foreign troops is not in Iraq's interest right now," Jabiri said. ''Although we don't want them to stay indefinitely, we need them now. Their presence is important until Iraqi troops are strong enough to counter violence and terrorist acts."
Despite religious ties between Iran and Iraqi Shi'ites, suspicion runs deep because of bitterness left over from the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.
US and British officials believe groups in Iraq opposed to the US-led coalition have received explosives and bomb-making technology from Iran. However, officials insist there is no evidence that the Tehran government is directly involved.
In other developments yesterday:
Authorities also found the bodies of three men who had been bound and shot in the head in northern Baghdad.
Ghalib Abdul Hussein Kubba, director-general of the Basra International Bank, was abducted from his home in Baghdad's western Yarmouk suburb at about 9:30 p.m. Thursday. The kidnappers arrived in a minibus and killed five guards at the house before seizing Kubba and his son, Hassan, who is a senior employee at the same bank, family members told police.
