Asia Times: Germany grasps the Iranian nettle


	July 15, 2000	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Power vacuum emerges in Kyrgyzstan
Yojana Sharma

BERLIN - As Iranian President Mohammed Khatami ends a controversial three-day visit to Germany Wednesday, the Berlin government has shown it is determined to patch up relations with Iran.

This is despite a rift in Germany's ruling coalition over the visit and worries that the trip would be marred by militant Iranian dissidents in exile. The German government has pushed ahead with the visit despite some 175 German parliamentarians across party lines signing a declaration days before Khatami's arrival calling on the government to cancel its invitation on human rights grounds.

Pressure also came from Israel for Berlin to drop the trip in protest at the conviction early this month of 10 Jews for spying for Israel against Iran. But the German government went ahead with the visit hoping to bolster Khatami, regarded as a reformist, in his struggle against hard-line conservative mullahs in Iran, which still wield considerable power. ''To not support the reformers around Khatami, or even to isolate them, would really amount to doing the (religious) radicals' bidding,'' said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

Germany is also hoping to reap economic advantage by restoring trade with Tehran, which has dropped to about half its 1992 values. German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, announced at a joint press conference on Monday that export credits for German investments to Iran would be increased five fold to US$490 million.

The trip - the first by an Iranian leader since that of Muhammed Reza, the last Shah of Iran in 1967 - has been important to Iran. The country is banking that a rapprochement with Germany and the European Union will lead to better ties with the United States which broke of relations with Iran in 1979 over the occupation of its embassy in Tehran.

But it has not been an easy visit. Rumors began to surface days before Khatami's arrival that the trip was in doubt. The rumors are thought to have been an attempt by the Iranian government to put pressure on the German authorities to contain activity by its large Iranian exile community which opposes the regime. Iran has said it expected Germany to ''take the necessary measures'' to deal with protests.

Days before the visit 10 armed Iranians moved into the German consulate in Amsterdam, demanding that Khatami's visit be cancelled in protest at ''two decades of repression'', increasing the nervousness of both the German and Iranian governments. Commentators note that Germany's anxiety over the visit has been apparent at all stages of its planning to the extent of not fixing an exact date till the last moment in order to enable Khatami to pull out if necessary.

In particular Berlin has been nervous about controlling dissident protests, a condition of Khatami's visit. Some 4,000 police officers were on hand when he arrived in the city. ''The German police are very afraid of violence. There has been a dirty deal between the German government and the mullahs to keep out the protesters because they are so afraid of angering him (Khatami),'' said Hussein Abadeni, a member of the foreign affairs committee of the exile dissident group the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The group regards Khatami as little more than a puppet of the religious conservatives.

Although 20,000 Iranian dissidents protested at Berlin's Brandenburg gate on Monday, NCRI claims another 10,000 were prevented from coming to Berlin. ''We have hundreds of letters from German police sent to our members all over Europe saying that they will receive prison sentences and heavy fines if they travel to Berlin,'' Abadeni told Inter Press Service. ''There were thousands of cases of our members being prevented from joining demonstrations.''

On the weekend before Khatami's arrival, police broke in several Berlin houses where Iranian dissidents were staying at 3am to arrest scores of people. The dissidents were mostly released by Tuesday. Dissident groups claim considerable force was used. As indication of just how far authorities were prepared to go to prevent trouble, the Schengen agreement which allows borderless travel between the countries of continental western Europe was suspended from Friday, as Germany reinstated border controls.

Meanwhile, Khatami travelled within Berlin by helicopter to avoid any contact with demonstrators. Khatami has become particularly sensitive to protests after violent demonstrations in Tehran last weekend by a large cross-section of society demanding reforms not just at the hard-line clerics but also Khatami himself who was criticized for failing to reform the system.

According to diplomats, the president showed his weakness by allowing religious right vigilantes to weigh into the Tehran demonstrators with brute force, with the police unable to restore calm. ''Khatami was unable to assert control of the demonstration,'' said one diplomat.

In Berlin, Khatami is hoping to project himself as a strong leader welcomed by the West. German authorities have done their best to help him in his image-building. Diplomats said conservative clerics in the Iranian government had also criticised Khatami's visit on the grounds that it would put Iran at the ''beck and call'' of western governments. Khatami could not afford a foreign policy failure in Berlin, an Asian diplomat noted, because Germany is an important economic partner and Europe's main exporter to Iran. Iran is also heavily indebted to German banks. On top of which Germany is also a crucial link in improving EU relations with Iran.

Europe's crisis with Iran was sparked off by a German court judgment in April 1997 when the murder of four Iranian dissidents in a Berlin restaurant was found by a German court to have been ordered by figures at the highest levels of the Iranian government, including Ayatollah Khamenei. The judgment led directly to all EU countries except for Greece recalling their ambassadors from Iran, although they later returned.

The election of Khatami, three years ago and the appointment of a new cabinet has since meant that most of the high officials specifically implicated in the 1997 judgment have been replaced, apart from Supreme Leader Khamenei himself. A rapprochement was hindered only by the threat of a death sentence on German businessman, Helmut Hofer, for allegedly having illicit sexual relations with an Iranian woman. That threat was lifted this January with the release of Hofer, which inturn paved the way for Germany's embassy in Tehran to be reopened.

Europe has been the main beneficiary of the US economic embargo against Iran with its market of 60 million consumers. France, the second largest Western European consumer of Iranian petroleum, was the first to welcome Khatami last year.

Iranian officials have made no secret of the fact that Khatami's visit with Germany will help improve relations between Iran and Europe and have a positive knock-on effect on relations with the US. ''We hope that more extensive relations with Europe will ultimately affect Iran's relations with the United States,'' Iranian Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharrazi said. ''Sooner or later greater ties between Iran and Germany will lead the United States to realise that it should revise its policy and improve relations with Iran.''

(Inter Press Service)