Karen Hughes accuses Iran of exporting terrorism
Web posted at: 2/19/2006 3:32:24
Source ::: The Peninsula

Doha: Karen Hughes, US undersecretary of state for public affairs, raised a number of issues at the US-Islamic world forum that opened here yesterday that are crucial to the relations between the US and the Muslim world.

"We are going to support the aspirations of the people of Iran for freedom," she said, accusing Tehran of backing and exporting terrorism.

Hughes said that an Iranian journalist was languishing in jail for the past six years just because he wrote about a series of killings of writers and intellectuals in the country. "He represents the people of Iran who want and deserve liberty," said Hughes. She asked countries in the region to allow people to form political parties. "Let them run their own newspapers, too," she said.

Hughes while saying that many newspapers in the US chose not to reprint the caricatures of the Prophet since they were offensive and even blasphemous, cautioned newspapers in the region not to publish anti-Christian and anti-semetic material.

She congratulated the Palestinian people for holding a free and fair election but reiterated the two-state concept saying that the US backed an independent Palestinian state existing side by side with Israel.