Security Council divided after Khamenei’s speech

Press, 24 September 1987, Page 6

Security Council divided after Khamenei’s speech

NZPA-Reuter United Nations The Security Council, including Western members, appeared split over new measures to halt the Iran-Iraq war after contradictory interpretations of a harsh United Nations speech by the Iranian President, Ali Khamenei. He called a New York news conference for today that was expected to help clarify what many delegates regarded as his rejection of a Security Council cease-fire order, a move that could bring international sanctions. Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Obed Asamoah, current president of the council, said late yesterday, however, that Mr Khamenei had not delivered Iran’s definitive response. After conferring with the Iranian leader, who also saw the SecretaryGeneral, Javier Perez de Cuellar, for about an hour, Mr Asamoah said Iran had not rejected the resolution and there was a basis for discussing implementation of it. “This is a time for quiet diplomacy," he told reporters. Earlier, the United States Secretary of State, George Shultz, and British Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, both in New York for the United

Nations session, called for an arms embargo against Iran through a new Security Council resolution. But West Germany’s Foreign Minister, HansDietrich Genscher, was reported by his aides to have agreed in a meeting with the Foreign Minister of China — both are council members - that the time for sanctions had not yet come. Japan and Italy also are members and diplomats speculated that they might prefer more time for negotiations before any move for sanctions. At a news conference, Mr Shultz said consultations about an arms embargo had begun. Sir Geoffrey Howe termed Mr Khamenei's United Nations speech “defiance and contempt of the Security Council and all that it has been trying to achieve.” If ever there was justification for an arms ban, this was it, he said. ,-A British vessel, the 'Hong Kong-registered tanker Gentle Breeze, was attacked in the Gulf on Tuesday and burned for 12 hours. A crewman was killed. Answering reporters’ questions after he saw Mr Khamenei, Asamoah said no-one should expect a war that had been going on for seven years to end

in “two weeks.” He said Iran’s only condition for a cease-fire was that the aggressor be identified. Iran says the war began on September 22, 1980, with an Iraqi invasion. Iraq asserts that Iran fired the first shot 18 days before that. After his peace mission to Teheran and Bagdad this month, the SecretaryGeneral reported that Iran offered an “undeclared cessation of hostilities” during an inquiry into responsibility for the war, but that Iraq rejected this condition and insisted on a formal cease-fire. In his speech to the General Assembly, Mr Khamenei denounced,,the Security Council and the charter rule that gives veto power to its five permanent members: the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Britain and China. Unless this were changed, he said, “the Security Council will remain, as it is today, a paper factory for issuing worthless and ineffective orders.”' “And the peoples of the world will continue to think that there is no place for settling international problems and that the only option left is to use violence.”