Iranians e-mail criticism to Washington from former U.S. Embassy

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran – The former U.S. Embassy in Tehran is once again the scene of anti-American protests, but now there are no angry shouts, just the clicking of keyboards.

More than 20 years after Iranian students took over the embassy, 7-year-old Mohammad Abbasi used a computer terminal at the site Tuesday to send a message to Washington.

"Why America is killing Afghan children? Are they terrorists?" Mohammad asked President Bush in an e-mail about the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan.

The embassy, recently reopened as a museum, now has a tent on the grounds with two computer terminals and the e-mail addresses of Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and members of Congress.

About 200 people used the computers Tuesday and an estimated 1,000 people have sent e-mails to Washington since the facility opened at the beginning of the month.

"We have provided a chance for Iranian people to directly convey their messages and words to American leaders," said the organizer of the Internet facility, Masoud Lotfi. "The messages may get American decision-makers to think of the genuine grievances of the Iranian people."

"When we chant 'Death to America!', there is a deep reason, going back many decades, for that. Americans need to hear this voice," Lotfi added.

As with most of the e-mail writers, Abbasi was born long after militant Iranian students seized the embassy in November 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

The attack provoked the rupture of U.S.-Iranian diplomatic relations and U.S. sanctions on Iran that remain in force.

Most of the e-mail criticized U.S. policy toward Iran and the current military campaign against terrorists and the ruling Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

"I call on President Bush, who considers himself the leader of the most democratic country in the world, to demand trial of the (USS) Vincennes commander and his aides as war criminals for killing the innocent passengers of a civilian plane over the Persian Gulf," said one e-mail to The White House.

The writer referred to the July 1988 shoot down of an Iranian airliner by the warship USS Vincennes. The United States said the airliner was mistaken for a hostile aircraft. All 290 people aboard the plane were killed.

Some of the e-mail was less polite, using insults and swear words, and showed many young people still harbor the same anti-American hostility that characterized Iran at the time of the embassy takeover.

APNP-11-06-01 1512CST