MANAMA, Bahrain: Iran’s parliament voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to break diplomatic relations with Britain in one week unless London changes its “hostile stance” to Ayatollah ruhollah Khomeini’s death degree against author Salman Rushdie,
Tehran Radio and the official Islamic Republic News Agency said all but “two or three” of the 201 deputies present in the Majlis, or parliament, voted in favor of severing ties with Britain.
We agree with the proposal and in future this will be our stand towards any country which attacks Islam and Islamic sanctities,” IRNA quoted Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati as saying before the vote.
IRNA said the deputies stood up after the vote and celebrated their first round victory with salawat traditional cries praising the Prophet Mohammad.
The Iranian move was in response to Britain’s role leading the 12 member European Community in pulling its diplomats out of Tehran after a death threat issued by Khomeini against the Indian bom British author of “The Satanic Verses”. Rushdie’s novel is considered blasphemous by Moslems.
IRNA said the Majlis would give Britain a week to “reconsider its unprincipled stand on the contents of the “Satanic Verses” before ordering the Iranian Foreign Ministry to cut off all diplomatic ties.”
The agency said the proposal was before the “Council of Guardians” for final approval and relations between the two countries would be automatically severed if there was no response from London a week after the bill became law.
British officials have accused the Kremlin of exploiting the Rushdie affair to improve ties with Iran.
In Moscow Monday, about 30 Soviet human rights activists carrying signs reading, “Khomeini murders” demonstrated peacefully against the death threat in front of the Iranian Embassy.
In India, one person died and at least 30 others were injured Monday in the nation’s only predominantly Moslem state when hundreds of demonstrators turned violent while protesting the deaths of 13 people in rioting last week in Bombay over “The Satanic Vereae Police confronted the protesters in the Budshah Chowk sector of Srinagar, 400 miles north of New Delhi, and a bomb was hurled at the officers. The device exploded, killing a 27 year old resident and wounding seven others.
Rioting later erupted after the funeral of the dead man, with an estimated 500 protesters shouting “death to Rushdie” and hurling rocks and other debris at riot police in a number of areas of the picturesque lakeside city.
Since Feb. 7 at least 16 people have been killed and hundreds injured in India during protests against the book.
The bloodshed came as a newly formed group in India, the Islamic Unity Movement, announced that it would give $66,660 to anyone who carried out Khomeini’s assassination order.
An Iranian who kills Rushdie and $1 million to anyone else.
Rushdie, 41, who was born in Bombay and educated in Britain, where he took citizenship, cancelled a U.S. trip to promote his book and went into hiding after Iran offered the bounties.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 3, 1989
