UN envoy doubts U.S. assertion Iran arming Afghan insurgents

In June, Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Assistant Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said weapons were being shipped into Afghanistan from Iran. Burns said there was “irrefutable evidence” that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was arming the Taliban.

Last week, U.S. Army Gen. Dan McNeill, NATO’s senior Afghanistan commander, told the Washington Post that Western troops intercepted a cache of Iranian made weapons on Sept. 6 on the remote western Afghan-Iranian frontier in Farah province that included “upscale” roadside bombs similar to ones confronted by American forces in Iraq.

Iran has denied that it is doing anything to subvert the peace in Afghanistan. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on a visit to Kabul last month that his government fully supports the Karzai government. In Ottawa, the federal government has no additional corroboration beyond the initial reports of negative Iranian influence in Afghanistan, but if true, they would have serious implications for Canadians on the ground there, said Bernier, Canada’s new foreign minister.

“We’re deeply concerned about that,” Bernier told CanWest News Service in an interview. “If it’s true, such support will directly endanger the lives of Canadians and international forces and aid workers.”