Bush calls on Tehran to free 4 detainees
The Iranian Americans are no threat, he said. He also wanted information on a former FBI agent.
WASHINGTON - President Bush yesterday demanded that Iran "immediately and unconditionally" release four Iranian Americans detained for alleged espionage and that it provide information about a former FBI agent missing in the country.
"I strongly condemn their detention at the hands of Iranian authorities," the president said in a written statement, stepping up pressure on Tehran over the cases.
The United States has denied that the four detainees are spies or employees of the U.S. government. The State Department on Thursday warned U.S. citizens against traveling to Iran, accusing its Islamic authorities of a "disturbing pattern" of harassment of Iranian Americans.
The four detained scholars and activists are Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars; Kian Tajbakhsh, with George Soros' Open Society Institute; journalist Parnaz Azima, from the U.S.-funded Radio Farda; and Ali Shakeri, a peace activist and founding board member at the University of California, Irvine, Center for Citizen Peacebuilding.
Esfandiari, 67, was arrested in Tehran on May 8 while visiting her mother.
Iran's Intelligence Ministry said Esfandiari was trying to set the stage for a "soft revolution" in Iran. The State Department last week said Iran's accusations were "absurd."
"These individuals have dedicated themselves to building bridges between the American and Iranian people, a goal the Iranian regime claims to support," Bush said. "Their presence in Iran - to visit their parents or to conduct humanitarian work - poses no threat."
At the State Department, deputy spokesman Tom Casey said Tehran had not responded to repeated requests for access to the detainees by Swiss officials who act as intermediaries for the United States in Iran because the two nations do not have diplomatic relations.
"This is hardly the stuff of espionage; this is hardly the stuff of government disputes," he told reporters.
"It is absolutely incredible to us," Casey said, "to think that there could be any possible doubt in the Iranians' minds that these individuals are there simply to conduct normal, basic human interactions, including family visits."
Bush's statement also said he was disturbed by the fact that Iran had still not provided any information about the welfare and whereabouts of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who went missing in Iran while on private business there in March.
"I call on Iran's leaders to tell us what they know about his whereabouts," the president said.
Rice: U.S. Doesn't Seek Iran War
The United States is not preparing for war against Iran, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday, taking a swipe at a U.N. official who said he was worried about "crazies" who want to start bombing.
"The president has made clear that we are on a diplomatic course," she said in regard to U.S. opposition to Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Rice, in Spain at the close of a European visit, was asked about the comments of the chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. Mohamed ElBaradei was quoted by
the BBC as warning against the views of "new crazies who say, 'Let's go and
bomb Iran.' "
The United States does not rule out military action but says there is no plan or intention to attack Tehran.
ElBaradei's remarks were
part of an interview the International Atomic Energy Agency head gave for a documentary. The remarks were posted yesterday on the BBC Web site.
Rice said the United States was using diplomacy to avoid "getting to a place where we have an unpalatable choice."
She described that as
a choice "between having
to do something on the military side or allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon. That's a choice that people talk about."
- Associated PressEndText