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Spy charges absurd - US
29/05/2007 21:51 - (SA)
Washington - The United States rejected as "absurd" on Tuesday Iranian allegations of spying against three US-Iranian nationals.
Iran announced earlier on Tuesday that US-Iranian scholars Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh were being held in prison on accusations of espionage while journalist Parnaz Azima remained free, but faced the same charges.
"It's absurd to allege that they are American spies, American government employees, or that anything they've been doing in Iran is driven by American government concerns," said State Department spokesperson Tom Casey.
"These are individuals who are private citizens," he said.
"They are not party to any of the policy disputes between the government of the United States and the government of Iran."
Casey said Iranian authorities had ignored multiple requests by Switzerland, which represents US interests in Tehran, for consular access to the three accused.
Iran, which does not recognise dual nationality for its citizens, has not officially informed US authorities about the three cases, he said.
"We continue to urge the Iranian government to let them go, to let them go back to visiting their families, to come back home to be with their families here, and to continue the very basic people-to-people kind of work that they've been pursuing in Iran for many years," he said.
The US official also sought to play down speculation linking the treatment by Tehran of dual US-Iranian citizens and high diplomatic tensions between the two governments, notably over Iran's nuclear programme and its alleged support for anti-US insurgents in Iraq.
"We don't see any linkage between it and those other issues," he said.
Iran announced the spying charges against the three dual nationals a day after senior US and Iranian diplomats met in Baghdad for the highest level talks between the two nations in decades.
Casey said the issue of the three did not come up at the meeting, which was focussed on efforts to stabilise Iraq.
- AFP
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