Clark: Tehran visit should help

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark says his attendance at a Tehran conference on US-Iranian problems probably increased chances for US-Iranian reconciliation, Monitor correspondent John Cooley reports.

Mr. Clark told an ABC News "Issues and Answers" TV panel that representatives of 54 nations attending the conference voted for reaching such a reconciliation as soon as possible. "Be assured the American hostages are included in this," Iranian Foreign Minister Sadeq Ghotbzadeh informed him, although the hostage problem was not included in the wording of the conference resolution.

Mr. Clark denied that he had promised Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr to initiate a new investigation in the United States of the US role in the Shah's former rule. He had said that this "is the most important thing to do," provided "there's an effective way to determine the truth about Iran."

Mr. Clark said support of "tyrants" like the Shah and President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines violated US democratic principles, and "we always lose out in the end." The Soviet threat to Iran had arisen largely because of continued US interference there, he said.

Mr. Clark shrugged off a call by Kansas Sen. Robert Dole for Mr. Clark's prosecution for violating President Carter's ban on travel to Iran and charges that he had acted as a "traitor."

No one, he recalled, had objected to his attendance at previous human-rights conferences where Soviet dissidents were discussed, or to his complying with President Carter's request to help in the hostage crisis when it first erupted and he tried unsuccessfully to reach Tehran last November.