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Iranian Premier Rajai
Defends Pact on Hostages
Against Rival's Criticism
By James Dalgleish
Reuter
TEHRAN, Jan. 26 - Prime Minis-
· ter Mohammad Ali Rajai defended his
· government today against Iranian crit-
ics of the deal with Washington that
secured, freedom for the American
hostages.
.
Iran's parliament, he said no other
government could have " extracted
mbre undertakings from the United
Sistes than "the deprived and revolu-
tomary nation of Iran."
45060724
is government had followed the
Base conditions laid down by the
Bilis, he said, and he asked those
complained that .Iran had got
k none of the late shah's wealth
why they had not made any better
srestions for its return.
the Iranian Central Bank still did
nothave a complete list of the fortune
ofthe shah and his relatives after
working on it for the past year, Rajai
sand and thus Iran was asking for
something whose exact size and na-
tu was unknown.
Washington agreed under the deal
to freeze all assets of the shah and his
relayjives in the United States and to
require anyone possessing such assets
or nowledge of them to tell the ad-
ministration.
In. reply to criticism that Iran had
asked Washington only to guarantee
; futave noninterference in Iranian af-
fans with no mention of alleged past
involvement, Rajai said:
"nerica ... never accepts to ad- .
mit Previous intervention, even at the
pric of 52 people."
President Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr,
who has said he was not kept in-
formed of the final stages of the hos-
tageChegotiations, asked today in an
interview with the. newspaper Mizan
whether Iran had succeeded in recov-
ering its frozen assets and the wealth
of the late shah.
The newspaper Islamic Revolution,
which Bani-Sadr controls, yesterday
challenged the government's view that"
Iran had got all it sought"
Rajai attacked people who argued
that Iran's problems all stemmed from
the seizure of the hostages in Novem-"
ber 1979. He called them counterrev-
olutionary.
Asked what can would do if Wash-
ington did not fulfill its part of the
deal, he said:"I do not think they
would be so unwise."
Rafsanjani -denied allegations that
some hostages had been maltreated,
saying: "I know most of them [the ;
radical Moslems who held the hos-
tages] and I am sure that they are not
the sort of people who would do machine
i a thing Of course, if one of the hos-
tages wanted to escape and they fired
into the air or hit him when they ar-
w rested. him, that is not what'I would
call torture."
In his address to the Majlis, Rajai
said: "If the U.S. doesn't want to meet
its undertakings, its guilty face wil be
shown to the world even more than
before."
: . In response to criticism that Iran
had recovered less than $3 billion of
its frozen assets, he said this was what
was left from $8 billion after repaying
all Iran's loans from U.S. banks and
placing money with Algeria, which
acted as go-between for settlement of
claims between Iran and the United
States.
Iran originally asked the United
States for $24 billion in guarantees
that it would carry out the Majlis
conditions of noninterference, drop-
ping all legal claims against Iran and
returning its frozen assets and the late
shah's fortune.
"The whole amount of Iranian as-
sets is about $8 billion, from which we
should pay our loans completely,"
Rajai said. .
Iraqis Say Kurdish Guerrillas Strike
Iranian Troops Behind War's Front
Renter
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Jan. 26 +-
todranian Kurdish guerrillas are striking
at Iranian troops from mountain bases
z behind Iraq's front line in the Persian
Gulf war, Iraqi military officers said
y.today.
# The officers, interviewed by West- : the Persian Gulf war started in Sep-
tember.
Sen correspondents at a front-line po-
sition inside Iranian territory in the
rugged Kurdistan region, said Bagh-
dad was backing Kurdish demands for
greater autonomy from the Tehran
government.
They insisted, however, that the
well-armed Pesh Merga Kurdish guer- . the battle front from the deserts in
rillas were not fighting under Iraqi di-" the south all the way up to the Tur-
cection.
"They have their own fight against
[Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini," said
an Iraqi major who would not give his
name.
Reporters saw several dozen guerril-
les in two mountain villages now oc-
Cupied by Iraqi forces ..
The guerrillas, wearing their tradi-"
tional baggy pantaloons, embroidered
waistcoats and black and white head-
scarves, were armed with both Soviet-
designed Kalashnikovs and U.S .- made
M16 rifles.
Western reporters were escorted by
the Iraqi Army during the weekend to
the Iranian village of Nowsud, 50
miles southeast of this Iraqi market
town.
Both Iran and Iraq have attempted
to harness Kurdish discontent since
The Kurdish people live in a moun-
' tain region spamming northern Iraq,
northern Iran and parts of Syria, the
Soviet Union and Turkey.
In December Iraqi President Sad-
dam Hussein said he had extended
kish border. But there have been no
reports since then of fighting farther
north than Nowsud.
The Iraqis say they seized control
of two strategic passes near Nowsud
and Penjwin to the north to prevent
Iranian cross-border raids.
The Kurdish problem is one of the
. causes of the war. Iranian support un-
der the late shah for a rebellion
against Baghdad by Iraqi Kurds in
· the early 1970s forced the Iraqi gov-
"ernment into signing a 1975 agree-
ment with Iran.
Iraq unilaterally abrogated the
agreement just before the war began.
Under the accord, Iran said it would
abandon support for the Iraqi Kurds
in return for a new border agreement
between the two countries.
Now Iraq is fighting 'to recover
what it calls usurped border territory.
Evidence of ruthlessness in the fight
against the Kurds was shown in the
mountains southeast of this Iraqi
Kurdish cultural center and universityt
town.
Reporters were briefed at a hiltop
fortress constructed from the rubble
of a farming community destroyed
during the Kurdish revolt.
In a speech last month, Saddans
Hussein said total casualties in the
Kurdish rebellion, which ended in
1975, were 60,000 dead and injured
including 16,000 regular troops.
After the revolt Iraq established
what it called an autonomous region
for the Kurds, who elected their own
assembly last September.
Because of the history of enmityC
between Baghdad and the Kurds,
Iraqi officers say they do not entirelyo
trust their new-found Iranian com-O.
rades-in-arms.
;
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Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00788R0021
Approved
Tuesday, January ., Syoz
MOHAMMAD ALI RAJAI
... defended by Majlis speaker,
5700450007-2 4
Majlis Speaker Hojatoleslam Ali
Outlining the accord to the Majlis, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said
Rajai's cabinet had done its best in
the hostage negotiations.
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