A SENIOR US Treasury official has met with Iranian representatives in Paris as part of a multinational gathering to discuss "terror financing".
In a departure from usual policy, Daniel Glaser, was given permission by the Bush administration to attend the meeting last month. Under US policy contacts with Iran are usually forbidden.
Glaser, who is the Treasury Department's deputy assistant
secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, co-chaired, with Italy, a Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting to discuss money laundering and ways to crackdown on terrorism financing.
"To my knowledge, they did not have one-on-one meetings (with the Iranians]," said a senior US official.
"It was something agreed within the US government that Glaser could attend."
The Treasury Department said the meeting, attended by around a dozen countries, was initiated by the task force, a 34-nation group of which Iran is not a member.
"The meeting was part of an ongoing effort to address the significant threat Iran poses to the integrity of the international financial system," said Treasury Department spokesman Andrew DeSouza.
Yesterday, Iran's economy minister, Davoud Danesh-Jafari, said: "They (FATF] invited Iranian officials to see what is being done in Iran in regards to this issue (money laundering]. There was an exchange of views about this issue."
Last October, the task force said it was concerned over Iran's "lack of a comprehensive anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism regime" and urged Iran to tackle this problem on an "urgent basis".
The US has imposed its own sanctions against Iranian banks and groups it suspects of financing terrorism.
In October, Washington designated Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a "proliferator" of weapons of mass destruction and imposed sanctions on its elite Qods force.
The Bush administration is at loggerheads with Tehran over its nuclear programme and other issues.
As it does not have diplomatic ties with Iran, meetings such as those in Paris are rare.
Last week, US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, chastised her ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, for joining a panel discussion with Iran's foreign minister in Davos, Switzerland, without first getting permission to attend.
The full article contains 363 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
