Manouchehr Mottaki

'I accuse the United States, Britain and their forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan of promoting terrorism in the region,' he said in an address to the 17th International Conference on Central Asia and the Caucasus in Tehran on Monday.

The two-day conference was organized by the Iranian Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies.

Mottaki said there were 'hidden hands' trying to promote terrorism under the pretext of the campaign against terrorism.

The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the US with a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq 'to campaign against terrorism and drug trafficking, and establish security', although terrorism greatly increased after the US invasions, he said.

Commenting on the arrest of Jundallah group leader Abdolmalek Rigi, the foreign minister said that Jundallah had killed or injured over 400 people in Iran. He repeated accusations that Rigi had visited a US military base in Afghanistan just before his arrest, and said US officials must offer an explanation.

The Iranian foreign minister said that US officials should present their definition of terrorism because they parroted slogans about a campaign against terrorism but then turned a blind eye to human rights violations.

Mottaki said that the foreign military bases in the region had not been established to promote stability and security, but were actually centres for interference in the internal affairs of regional states.
 
The Iranian foreign minister also said that Tehran planned to host an international conference on disarmament in the near future.

Mottaki expressed the hope that more attention would be paid to the issue after the conference.

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