Iran Says al-Qaeda Members Transitted Territory "illegally"

TEHRAN, July 18 (AFP) - Iran acknowledged Sunday that suspected Al-Qaeda members involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks may have passed through its territory, but insisted they would have done so "illegally".
"We have very long borders and it is impossible to totally control them," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.
"It is natural that five of six people could have crossed our borders illegally without us seeing them," he insisted. "The same thing happens on the border between the United States and Mexico."
Asefi was responding to the September 11 commission report, due out Thursday in the United States, which according to US media reports alleges that Iran may have helped in the attacks by providing eight to 10 Al-Qaeda hijackers with safe passage to and from training camps in Afghanistan.
Time and Newsweek, in similar reports quoting congressional, commission and government sources, said Iran relaxed border controls and provided "clean" passports for the so-called "muscle hijackers" to transit Iran to and from Osama bin Laden`s camps between October 2000 and February 2001.
Iran condemned the attacks, but has frequently been accused of harbouring and not cracking down on the group. And in February, Spain`s top anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzon alleged that Al-Qaeda had a "board of managers" operating in Iran.
But the regime was seen as being fiercely hostile to Afghanistan`s Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and has vehemently denied allegations that it is supporting them.
In late 1998 Iran even went to the brink of attacking Afghanistan in retaliation for the murder of a number of its diplomats by the Taliban in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
"After September 11, we reinforced our border controls. But before September 11, who knew what was going to happen?" Asefi asserted.
He also dismissed the allegations, accusing the United States of trying to cover up their "failure in Iraq". He added that he expected "these type of claims to multiply in the run-up to the American presidential election" in November.
On Saturday, Iran`s Intelligence Minister Ali Yunessi announced that his services had dismantled all Al-Qaeda branches in the Islamic republic, but gave no further details.
In 2003, Iran also confirmed it was holding senior al-Qaeda members, but it has so far refused to identify them. It has said the detained group members could go on trial here, but that the process could take years.
Diplomats and Arab press reports have pointed to the possible presence in Iran of the movement`s spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Gaith, and its number three, Saif al-Adel, as well as Bin Laden`s son and Al-Qaeda heir, Saad.
The Iranian government has also responded to past allegations by criticising what it sees as a failure by US troops in Iraq to crack down on the People`s Mujahedeen, the main Iranian armed opposition group, which Washington considers a terrorist organisation.