BY MA'MUD SHIRVANI
NEW YORK - The government of Iran hosted a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Tehran in early December, attracting governmental representatives from 55 countries with a total population of more than one billion people. It was the eighth meeting of the OIC, attended by 28 heads of state, prime ministers, and crown princes. Some 2,500 people were at the three-day conference, including members of the press from each country.

For the occasion the Iranian government built a new conference center. It declared a four-day holiday in order to highlight the event, as well as ease the traffic in the capital city and facilitate security.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told the Tehran daily Etteláat International that U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright had spent 40 minutes with him attempting to dissuade him from traveling to Iran. "But since the most important item in the conference was to be Palestine, I felt that I had to come and came," Arafat said.

It was reported that some other governments also were unsuccessfully pressed by Washington not to attend. Among other Middle Eastern leaders in attendance were Syrian president Hafez Assad, Saudi crown prince Abdullah, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa of Egypt, and Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan of Iraq.

In marked contrast, most governments in the Arab world had boycotted a U.S.-sponsored economic conference a month earlier in Doha, Qatar, in protest against U.S. complicity with the Israeli regime's failure to honor its previous agreements with the Palestinians. Albright was conspicuous for her presence at the boycotted conference.

The next meeting of the OIC is scheduled to take place in Qatar in the year 2000, and Iran will head up the organization in the interim.

The final declaration of the conference, adopted unanimously, called for Islamic unity, hailed the people of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria for their resistance against Israeli aggression, condemned Israeli state terrorism, as well as calling for self-determination for Palestinians and making Jerusalem the capital of an independent Palestinian state. The declaration called on all countries to ignore the U.S. sanctions against Libya and Iran. The final declaration was silent on the U.S. war drive against Iraq.

Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, head of the Iranian state, opened the conference with a keynote address that took a militant tone. He praised the "proud Islamic youth of Palestine and Lebanon" for fighting to "secure the rights of the Palestinian nation " and to "change the Islamic world from a passive to an active force." He said the Iranian government opposed the "land-for-peace" formula for Palestine because it means "Zionists handing back the occupied land of the neighbors in return for our recognition that Palestine belongs to the Zionists."

Khamenei condemned the presence of the U.S. fleet in the "Persian Gulf which is an Islamic sea" as a cause of instability and insecurity in the region. In calling on the OIC to counter the U.S. military presence there, he asked, "What can the U.S. do in the face of a united front of Islamic countries from Indonesia to North Africa?" According to press reports Khamenei received polite applause for his speech. As with the final conference resolution, his speech did not mention the U.S. war moves against Iraq.

The size and character of the conference in Tehran registered the failure of Washington's campaign to isolate Iran, a drive that stems from imperialism's hostility to the 1979 Iranian revolution. Working people overthrew the shah's monarchy there, a major prop of U.S. interests in the region that came to power in 1953 through a CIA-engineered military coup.

In a December 16 editorial, the liberal New York Times, which reflects the views of a major section the U.S. ruling class, expressed frustration at the failure of U.S. aggressive foreign policy in the region. "Washington's long effort to isolate Iran has reached a phase of diminishing returns. America's economic embargo, though justified when imposed, has turned out to be largely an empty gesture, honored by no other country and brazenly violated by American companies."

The editorial offered prospects of better relations with Iran if the government there shifted its policies to "end its support for terrorist groups, stop trying to build nuclear weapons and cease trying to disrupt the Middle East peace effort" - code words for demands that Iran not interfere with imperialist interests.

Iranian president Mohammed Khatemi also addressed the OIC summit. In what some U.S. big-business newspapers called a "conciliatory" speech, Khatemi called for a "thoughtful dialogue" to resolve differences with Washington.

U.S. president William Clinton responded by saying that he was "quite encouraged" by the Iranian president's remarks and that "I would like nothing better than to have a dialogue with Iran," as long as it includes U.S. "concerns."

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, an unnamed senior U.S. official "gave Tehran credit for some of the moderate statements that emerged from the Islamic summit... `Iran played a key role in shaping' the conference's communiqué, which condemned terrorism, called for dialogue between Islam and the West and - significantly - didn't call for lifting U.S.-supported sanctions against Iraq, the U.S. official said."

Washington and Tehran have been cooperating in the last few months to reach a settlement of the war in Afghanistan and bring about a stable government, according to a December 15 report in the New York Times. The currently dominant Taliban forces have been bogged down in the northern part of Afghanistan and facing fierce resistance, mainly by a Shiite population that is supported by the Iranian government.

In its efforts to penetrate Central Asia and the Caspian Sea region Washington also has to deal with Iran's growing influence there. All five Central Asian republics and Azerbaijan sent high-level delegations to the conference in Tehran. Azerbaijan was represented by its president, Heydar Aliev.

The final declaration of the conference called on "Muslim countries" to end all military ties with the Israeli regime. This demand was directed only against the Turkish government, which has signed military agreements with Tel Aviv since 1996 that allow Israeli pilots to fly training missions in Turkey. They plan to conduct joint naval maneuvers with Israeli and U.S. military forces in January. In protest against this item in the summit declaration, President Suleyman Demirel of Turkey left the conference before the final vote.

Shortly afterward, it was reported that the leaders of the European Union rejected the Ankara regime's application for membership, the only rejection of the 12 governments that applied. Turkish prime minister Mesut Yilmaz accused European officials of discriminating against Muslim Turkey. "People who want to change the EU into a Christian Union have won," he said. Turkish immigrants live throughout Europe, where they are subject to widespread discrimination.  
 
 
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