Iran uninvites Charlotte team

By DAVID PERLMUTT and TIM WHITMIRE

July 7, 2000 Web posted at: 2:00 PM EDT (1800 GMT)

In this story: History of troubled relations International issue snares locals RELATED STORIES

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Charlotte Observer) -- The Charlotte Eagles soccer team was supposed to be on the Iranian resort island of Kish today, preparing for a friendly soccer tournament that begins Sunday.

But in the complicated arena of international relations, things often don't turn out as planned.

The minor league team, which uses soccer as a Christian ministry, was playing in Boston last week when it was informed by Iranian officials that it wouldn't be allowed in the country. It unwittingly became the latest pawn in a controversy over a U.S. policy that requires Iranians visiting America to be fingerprinted and photographed.

Team officials, who were to have departed for Iran on Sunday, are downplaying the incident. "We would have liked to have gone," Eagles spokesman Tom Engstrom said Wednesday. "But it is nothing we can control. It's not a big issue for us - it's not a big deal."

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But Eagles co-captain Ryan Leib acknowledged he was disappointed. For six months the team had been raising money to make the trip, he said.

"The decision had more to do with Iranian-American relations than soccer," said Leib, a salesman for a soccer uniform company. "Soccer is an international language. Even if we have very different views or languages, we can still build great relationships through soccer. So, yes, this is pretty disheartening."

The Eagles play in the United Soccer League, two rungs down from Major League Soccer. They would have been the only foreign team in the Kish tournament.

Kish, a 35-square-mile island, is one of three Iranian free-trade zones and is known as "the Pearl of the Persian Gulf."

Under federal law, visitors from four countries - Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan - must be fingerprinted and photographed after arriving in the United States, a policy based on national security concerns. All four are nations with unfriendly relations with the United States, due mainly to their links to terrorist groups.

Relations between Iran and the United States have been troubled since 1979, when Muslim militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

In 1997, moderate Mohammad Khatami was elected president of Iran. He soon began lobbying publicly for improved relations with the United States.

In an echo of the "Pingpong diplomacy" that paved the way for President Nixon's opening to China in the early 1970s, U.S. and Iranian officials have since tried using athletic contests between the nations to improve relations.

In 1998, U.S. wrestlers traveled to Iran in the first official visit by Americans since the hostage crisis. Later in the year, Iranian wrestlers visited the United States, and the American team returned to Iran for the world championships.

Those visits were a cause for celebration in Iran, said R.K. Ramazani, professor emeritus of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia and a native of Iran.

"Iranians danced in the street; the American flag went up," he said. "It was an incredible development."

Also in 1998, the countries faced each other on the soccer field in France during the World Cup. In January, a follow-up match was in Pasadena, Calif.

However, the fingerprinting policy has hindered progress.

U.S. and Iranian soccer players shake hands before January's match in California

The January soccer match went ahead only after U.S. officials waived the fingerprinting requirement. But there was no waiver for two other Iranian delegations arriving in the United States in recent months.

In April, an Iranian junior fencing team returned home after immigration officials demanded that the team be fingerprinted. Last month a delegation of Iranian women who planned to attend a U.N. conference on women in New York also went home rather than be fingerprinted.

In March, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright promised to remove "unnecessary impediments" to improved relations between the countries. But Ramazani, an American citizen who is a member of the board of governors of the American-Iranian Council, said U.S. immigration officials have continued to demand fingerprints.

"There is no question that there is a great deal of interest in that (Iranian) government in being treated equally," he said. "This is why there is a lot of sensitivity on the Iranian side on this matter.

"In my perspective, it is very unfortunate that our government cannot solve this problem. You can't make proclamations of good will and in practice violate them. It would be better not to make those statements."

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher wouldn't comment on the Eagles' situation Wednesday, but defended the fingerprinting policy.

"We continue to support people-to-people exchanges, we believe them to be important. But we also believe it important to enforce our law regarding the need for fingerprinting."

The Eagles, barred from the country by Iran's Foreign Ministry, are the latest to be caught in the fingerprinting flap.

"We would like to welcome American teams and treat them in a friendly and civilized way," Bahram Afsharzadeh, deputy of the country's Physical Education Organization, told The Associated Press. "We expect the same from the Americans. Fingerprinting Iranians is considered an insult against the Iranian nation. We expect the United States to waive the fingerprinting formality and show respect for Iranians to allow improved sports contacts."

Leib said Iranian soccer officials had been talking to the Eagles about working with youth teams in Iran, and possibly bringing the better Iranian soccer players to play on U.S. teams.

Though the Eagles use soccer to spread their Christian faith, Leib said the players intended to play, not proselytize, during the visit to Kish. Now, because of the current political winds, that won't be possible.

"We were hoping to help them out with their soccer needs," Leib said. "If not for the decision, we'd be in Iran playing soccer as we speak. But we know there will be open doors down the road. We just have to stay fit and be ready to go whenever the time comes."

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