An agreement fraught with uncertainty

AMIA bombing attack in Buenos Aires

by Andrés Cisneros

For the Herald

The agreement between the Iranian régime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (not yet the Argentine state) is supposedly founded on a mutual desire to co-operate in the quest for the truth behind the 1994 AMIA Jewish community centre bombing. And since Iran has proclaimed its innocence so repeatedly, it can safely be assumed that none of its six officials now offering to testify have anything to add which might contradict that innocence. So why all the expectation?

If the main benefit for Argentina consists in subjecting the six suspects to the skilful cross-examination of the Argentine prosecutor, as our government affirms, it would be stretching things considerably to imagine that such militants would feel challenged by a procedure which basically requires them to say no to everything. Wasn’t there, don’t know anything.

But in contrast, if Argentina must deploy before the “truth commission” of five international legal super-experts the totality of the investigatory documentation so patiently collected, it seems likely that Iran will end up the beneficiary with far more information than its sextet of officials could ever supply to the Argentine Judiciary.

It is perfectly imaginable that, after both sides have shown their cards, the Iranians will limit themselves to purely negative testimony while having the chance to argue, point for point, the validity and scope of the other evidence, thus risking the danger of a legal deadlock in which each side ends up offering the world the version which most favours them. Much of global public opinion might well be induced to think that the evidence of our courts is not very consistent.

Since it is true, as our foreign minister has informed us, that the “truth commission” will neither yield sovereignty nor delay local legal procedures, it would be equally true that we will all be awaiting the commission’s conclusions recommending the path to follow in a period which will surely not be short — hopefully, it will not exceed the term of the president who has chosen to go down this road.

It is striking that Iran has not been required to join the legal system of the United Nations. Except for the Beagle or Laguna del Desierto border disputes with Chile, where arbitration panels or judges were jointly agreed, Argentina has only had three major international conflicts since the end of World War II — the Malvinas, Itaipú dam and the pulp mills of Uruguay — and in all three it went to the UN and its mechanisms of international justice. There is no reason why this brand-new commission should not have sessioned in New York with a UN legal beagle chairing the five wise men. In that event, the recommendations would have carried infinitely more weight than the arrangement announced a few days ago. These recommendations might then have passed through the UN General Assembly to produce a declaration which neither of the two sides would be able to elude easily.

It is equally striking that one elementary precaution was not required before accepting the Iranian offer. That country has a vast intelligence service which riddles the Middle East and the entire region, thus allowing one to assume beyond all doubt after the passage of 19 years that if the state of Iran was not responsible for the 1994 (and 1992) attack, it would be in a pretty good position to find out who was and let us know. For a start, perhaps they could have supplied the names of the accomplices within Argentina and the evidence against them. This would not have been enough but at least it would have been a preliminary token of the goodwill which most public opinion does not perceive in the Tehran régime and which Argentina is missing the chance to claim.

Andrés Cisneros was Argentine Deputy Foreign Minister from 1996 to 1999.