take for Charles to acknowledge that U.S. relations with Iran are much more complicated than he realizes? Perhaps he has forgotten the long-standing hostility between Iran and the Taliban 1 and the help given to the U.S. by Iran during the Afghanistan war2.

NOTE:SOURCES ALL COME FROM LEXIS-NEXIS SEARCHES

1Deutsche Presse-Agentur, September 30, 2001, Sunday, BC Cycle10:14 Central European TimeThe Iranian stance and that of the daily is very clear and Teheran has right from the beginning (1996) not acknowledged the Taliban group due to its orthodox interpretation of Islam and due to the massacre of Iranian diplomats, the daily said.

Iran was on the verge of a war with the Taliban after the groups agents massacred in 1998 eleven Iranian diplomats and one reporter of the state-run news agency IRNAin the northern Afghan town of Mazare Sharif.

Iran supports ousted President Burhaneddin Rabbani who is close to the main Taliban-opposition known as the Northern Alliance which controls over ten per cent of Afghanistan.

The Independent (London)October 5, 1996, Saturday

An Iranian cleric has accused Afghanistan's radical Islamic Taliban movement of giving Islam a bad name. "They stop girls from attending school, stop women from working . . . in the name of Islam," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told worshippers in Tehran. Shia Iran supported the ousted government of Burhanuddin Rabbani and is hostile to Sunni Taliban.

The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario)September 12, 1998 Saturday Final Edition

Taliban troops were reported to be 16 kilometres from the town of Bamiyan, where some 300,000 Hazaras from neighbouring villages have taken shelter to escape being massacred. The