Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar opened talks here Sunday with Iranian officials on the Middle East crisis as Tehran seeks to mobilize Muslim support for the Palestinian uprising against Israel.
"A dialogue has been established," Aznar told reporters while refusing to go into detail about his discussions. Madrid supports the peace process while Islamic Iran does not recognize the state of Israel.
Aznar said his visit, the first to Iran by a Spanish head of government since the 1979 Islamic revolution, would lead to "opening some perspectives, not only in Spain but also in the European Union."
He met with First Vice President Hassan Habibi and President Mohammad Khatami on Sunday, and was due to meet later in the day with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi on Monday.
But Aznar refused to be drawn on whether he had pressed Iran, as requested by Washington, to intervene in the case of Israeli soldiers captured by the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah earlier this month.
At a joint news conference earlier, Khatami insisted that the Hezbollah are "a Lebanese and Arab movement on which Iran exercises no influence," but added that it had the support of Iran as a "symbol of resistance to occupation" that has made "many sacrifices."
Khatami also did not say whether Aznar raised the captives issue but acknowledged that Iran and Spain had "different positions" on the Palestinian question, although both wanted "a just peace."
Iran wants "a lasting peace that takes into consideration the rights of all Palestinians, both inside and outside" the Palestinian territories, the reformist president said.
"What is going on there now must be a lesson to everyone as it shows an explosion of anger by a people that has been held back for 50 years," Khatami said, adding that Israel has killed "more than 100 martyrs ... with incredible savagery."
Khatami added that Iran and Spain, which have agreed to cooperate on fighting terrorism, were "victims" after both nations were rocked by attacks in the past 24 hours.
Mortar bombs hit northern Tehran late Saturday, causing several explosions but no casualties, the official IRNA news agency reported.
(In statements faxed to AFP in Nicosia the opposition People's Mujahadeen claimed responsibility, saying the bombs hit the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards, killing and wounding a number of members of the elite force.)
Meanwhile a senior police warden in the Basque city of Vitoria was blown up by a car bomb early Sunday in an attack police said bore the hallmarks of the Basque separatist group ETA -- TEHRAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
