U.S. says Iran gives al Qaeda safe passage

WASHINGTON -- Al Qaeda terrorists fleeing Afghanistan have been allowed safe passage through Iran, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday, criticizing Tehran for a second straight day as a supporter of global terrorists. \n"It certainly would be helpful if they were more cooperative, and they have not been, particularly," Rumsfeld said. \nU.S. officials have said in recent months that Tehran had failed to move decisively against al Qaeda figures who fled over the western border of Afghanistan to Iran. \nAnd they have accused Iran of secretly working with warlords and other allies in western Afghanistan to undermine the U.S.-backed administration of interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. \nIn a rebuke Monday, Rumsfeld said Iran, Iraq and Syria "are inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing" in the Middle East. Rumsfeld specifically accused Iran and Syria of funneling arms to Lebanon for use by terrorists and criticized Iraq for offering payments of up to $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. \nRumsfeld was asked Tuesday to be more specific about how unhelpful Tehran has been to the Bush administration war against terrorism. \n"There is no question but that al Qaeda have moved into and found sanctuary in Iran. And there is no question but that al Qaeda have moved into Iran and out of Iran to the south and dispersed to some other countries," he said. \n"I can't think of a thing I've said that anyone by the wildest stretch of their imagination could characterize as helpful," Rumsfeld said at a press conference with Norwegian Defense Minister Kristin Krohn Devold. "They're all harmful and contributing to the problems with respect to global terrorists." \nHe acknowledged that the Iranian-Afghan border is porous and that it's impossible to know with certainty everything going on there. \nCIA Director George Tenet also recently said in congressional testimony that the United States sought help from other countries bordering Afghanistan to which Taliban and al Qaeda have been escaping. He mentioned Pakistan and Uzbekistan. \nAmong those believed to have fled to Iran is key al Qaeda organizer Abu Musab Zarqawi, a U.S. official said. \nZarqawi, who goes by the alias of Ahmad Fadeel al-Khalayleh, is considered among the top 25 al Qaeda leaders. He is believed to have helped organize a foiled millennium bombing plot in Jordan and to have fled Afghanistan to Iran sometime after U.S.-led air strikes began in October. His whereabouts now are unclear, the official said. \nIran has rejected charges it is tied to the those fleeing Afghanistan. \n"We have no common ground with these terrorist groups and the Taliban," Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar said early last month. \nAsked Tuesday how the United States could get at the problem inside Iran, Rumsfeld said "ultimately the (Iranian) people are going to have to change their circumstance." \n"The people are being repressed. They are being denied rights that most other people around the world seem to find a way to get for themselves," he said. "And I suspect that the leadership in Iran will find itself with difficulties over time." \nIran condemned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America and offered help uprooting terrorism. At the time, Iran also publicized opposition to Afghanistan's then-rulers, the Taliban. \nRelations chilled when President Bush named Iran as part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea.