Iran Detainee Urges U.S. to End Democracy Effort

A radio reporter being detained in Iran urged the Bush administration yesterday to end its vocal campaign for democracy there, saying it encouraged Iran's government to curtail its citizens' freedoms.

Parnaz Azima, who works for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda, spoke with WTOP radio in a telephone conversation that she believed was being monitored.

Azima is one of four Iranian Americans who were arrested while visiting Iran and charged with endangering national security. Her passport was seized on Jan. 25 when she arrived in Tehran to visit her mother. She is free on bail but is barred from leaving the country. Three others remain in custody, and the Iranian government has not spoken of their fate.

Azima said the Bush administration's $66 million campaign to promote change inside Iran through Persian-language news, entertainment and music broadcasts has spurred President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to work to eliminate Iran's democracy movement.

"I hope that Mr. Bush's administration doesn't repeat this. This is a very serious mistake," she said. "The open announcements about funding democracy in Iran have angered the government, and now they have one goal -- to crush those activities and to put pressure on the Iranian activists, especially those who are inside Iran."

A State Department spokeswoman, Nancy Beck, declined to comment on Azima's statements, saying she had not heard them.

Also detained in Iran are Haleh Esfandiari, who directs the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington; Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with George Soros's Open Society Institute; and Ali Shakeri, a California businessman.

A government spokesman said last week that the investigation of the four was in its "final phases."