E.E.C. boosts Iran sanctions ring

Press, 24 April 1980, Page 8

E.E.C. boosts Iran sanctions ring

NZPA-Reuter Luxemburg

The European Common Market has agreed to take sanctions against Iran, leading to a near-total trade embargo, until the hostages held in the United States embassy in Teheran are released.

E.E.C. Foreign Ministers have laid down a two-stage process, starting with largely symbolic measures. Trade, except in food and medical supplies, will be halted in mid-May. The Ministers, meeting to prepare for an E.E.C. summit meeting next week, announced an immediate ban on export contracts with Iran.

They also announced a cut in E.E.C. countries’ embassy staff in Teheran, with a parallel reduction in Iranian representation in E.E.C. capitals. They said their ambassadors would shortly re-

turn to Iran to explain theii decision. The measu.-es seemed likely to go some way to appeasing American feelings that western Europe was not giving Washington full backing in the hostage crisis. An original British proposal for joint Common Market action suggested that member States should stop buying Iranian oil,, but this was not mentioned in the final text.

The Common Market imports about six per cent of its oil from Iran.

In Iran, 11 people are reported to have been killed, and more than 1000 injured, in further clashes in the provinces between Muslim fundamentalists and Leftwing students over the Government’s decision to expel political organisations from college campuses.

In the Caspian Sea port of

Rasht, according to the State radio, five people died and about 1000 were wounded in several hours of fighting after about 10,000 people converged on the Gilan Provincial University to enforce the ruling Revolutionary Council’s decree.

In Ahwaz, capital of the south-western oil-producing province of Khuzestan, the radio said five people were killed and 200 were injured when townspeople drove students from the university grounds in response to a call by the city’s spiritual leader. In Zahedan, in the southeastern province of Baluchistan, one person was killed and 50 were injured in a similar clash. In Teheran the university was quiet after student supporters of the Marxist Fedayeen group evacuated their office. But the State radio said the casualty toll in

fighting there on Monday had risen to six dead and 400 injured. The four days of clashes throughout the country marked a showdown between Islamic groups and Leftist organisations which moved their headquarters to the universities after being ousted from their town offices in street riots in August President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, speaking at Teheran University, proclaimed the first stage of what he called an Islamic cultural revolution in the nation’s universities.

He presented the revolution as a drive for Iranian political and economic independence by ridding education of Western and Communist influence. More violence of a different kind was reported from Kurdistan province in west-

ern Iran, where Kurdish guerrillas are resisting Army movements which they see as intended to re-establish central Government control over the Kurdish region. | The Kurdish Society in Teheran said 18 guerrillas and townspeople had been injured in artillery battles in the Kurdistan capital of Sanandaj. The Kurdish Democratic Party in Sanandaj denied a statement by the Army joint-staff headquarters that the Kurds were suing for , peace, and claimed that guerrillas had halted an, Army reinforcement column heading for the city, killing between 40 and 50 troops. In the Kurdish town of Saqqez, where heavy fighting has been raging since last week, Kurdish sources; said their guerrillas were close to overwhelming the i local Army camp.