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Iran denies holding senior Al-Qaeda members

TEHERAN May 26. Iran, under pressure from Washington over its role in the U.S. -led war on terrorism, said today it had arrested members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda but none ranked high in the network.

Leading U.S. lawmakers predicted yesterday positive developments regarding the Al-Qaeda in coming days from Iran.

The U.S. officials say they have intelligence suggesting senior Al-Qaeda members hiding in Iran had prior knowledge of the May 12 suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia in which 34 people, including eight Americans, were killed.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said some Al-Qaeda members had been arrested in the Islamic Republic ``but the detainees are not senior Al-Qaeda members. Iran is serious about confronting Al-Qaeda,'' it said, calling on Washington to ``follow logic and wisdom in international relations and avoid making interfering remarks''.

Iran says it has in the last year arrested and deported around 500 Al-Qaeda members who slipped over its borders from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, said yesterday that Iran was trying to identify a group of Al-Qaeda suspects in custody and was willing to hand them over to ``friendly governments,'' such as Saudi Arabia.

The United States, which broke diplomatic ties with Teheran shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, has grown more critical of Iran since the end of the Iraq war last month. U.S. officials have accused Iran of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programme, meddling in post-war Iraq and harbouring Al-Qaeda.

Iran denies all the charges and insists it has long been ideologically opposed to the Al-Qaeda network.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the White House was due to consider on Tuesday a Pentagon-backed proposal to destabilise Iran's clerical government through a popular uprising. — Reuters

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