Reuters
Iranian diplomat snatched in Iraq
By Mariam Karouny 38 minutes ago
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms kidnapped a senior Iranian diplomat in Baghdad, Iraqi and Iranian officials said on Tuesday, and Tehran blamed the U.S. military and demanded his immediate release.
"We are dealing with this as a kidnapping," an Iraqi government official told Reuters.
The official said the diplomat, the second secretary at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, was snatched in the central Karrada district on Sunday by 30 gunmen wearing the uniforms of a special Iraqi army unit that often works with U.S. military forces in
Iraq.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini blamed U.S. forces for the kidnapping of Jalal Sharafi, saying it was carried out by a group attached to Iraq's Defense Ministry "which works under the supervision of American forces."
The ministry said it had summoned the Swiss and Iraqi ambassadors to
Iran to protest against the abduction. The Swiss embassy handles U.S. affairs in Iran, which has no diplomatic relations with Washington.
U.S. forces in Iraq have arrested a number of Iranians, including diplomats, in the past two months, and are still holding five Iranians. Washington accuses Tehran of aiding militants fighting U.S. forces in Iraq and
President Bush has vowed to disrupt such support.
"It seems that this terrorist act has been committed in the framework of Bush's order and with the goal of escalating the confrontation with Iran," Iran's ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, was quoted by Iranian state television as saying.
A U.S. military spokesman denied that U.S. forces had played a role in the incident, which comes amid tensions between the United States and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program.
"We are not aware of any mission that even resembles this incident," a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lieutenant- Colonel Christopher Garver, said.
ARRESTS
Hosseini said Sharafi was kidnapped outside a branch of Iran's Bank Melli in the Iraqi capital. The Iraqi official said the gunmen drove in four-wheel-drive vehicles and a BMW and were wearing uniforms of the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion, a special operations unit that works with U.S. forces.
The official said that police close to the scene opened fire on the gunmen and arrested six of them. Later, another security force came to the police station and said they were taking the six to the Serious Crimes building in Baghdad but the police discovered later that they never arrived there.
Non-Arab, Shi'ite Iran resumed diplomatic relations with Iraq following the ouster of
Saddam Hussein and the empowerment of Iraq's Shi'ite majority after U.S.-sponsored elections.
The Iraqi government has been critical of recent raids by American forces in which Iranians working with diplomatic offices in Iraq have been detained.
Tehran denies U.S. charges it is backing militants in Iraq and blames U.S. troops for the violence and for inflaming tensions between Iraq's majority Shi'ite and once dominant Sunni Arabs.
(Additional reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia in Baghdad and Edmund Blair in Tehran)