UN ready to help on Iran assets dispute if US agrees

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is ready to help settle a dispute between Iran and the US over Tehran's frozen assets, but only if both countries make that request, a UN spokesman said on Friday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on Ban to use his "good offices" to press the US to release all of Iran's frozen assets in US banks, in a letter sent on Thursday.

"The secretary-general's good offices are always available should both parties to whatever tensions or issue request it," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that the US was aware of Zarif's letter to Ban, Reuters reported.

"To the extent that this letter was prompted by the recent Supreme Court decision in the Bank Markazi v Peterson case, we believe the US laws and the application of those laws by the courts ... comport with international law," Toner said.

Another US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that there was no need for the UN to get involved.

"We have open lines of communication with Iran, and we'll continue to try to address any issues of mutual concern through those channels," the official said.

Zarif wrote to Ban in response to a US Supreme Court decision last week that said Tehran's frozen assets can be used to compensate victims of attacks blamed on Iran.

The foreign minister called the ruling "outrageous robbery disguised under a court order" and warned that Tehran reserves the right to take "counter-measures".

The Supreme Court ruled on 20 April that Iran must hand over nearly $2bn in frozen assets to the more than 1,000 survivors and relatives of those killed in attacks blamed on Tehran.

The attacks included the 1983 bombing of a US Marines barracks in Beirut and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

"It is in fact the United States that must pay long overdue reparations to the Iranian people for its persistent hostile policies," wrote Zarif.

He cited US involvement in the 1953 Iran coup that overthrew democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, US backing for Baghdad in the Iran-Iraq war and the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by a US missile in 1988 as grounds for US compensation to Iranian nationals.

Under a historic deal reached last year on curbing Iran's nuclear programme, tens of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets are to be released. But Iran officials have become increasingly frustrated, saying the US has failed to release the assets.

The Supreme Court ruling came after a New York tribunal in March ordered Tehran to pay $7.5 billion to victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - and $3 billion to insurers over related claims - after ruling that Iran had failed to prove that it did not help the bombers.

Zarif called the claim of Iranian involvement in the 9/11 attacks "absurd," saying it contradicts "even public statements as well as findings - open or sealed - of investigations by the US government and US Congress".