TEHRAN, Nov 25: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto expressed her helplessness vis a vis fundamentalists in Pakistan when Iranian leader Hashmi Rafsanjani told her not to support the Taliban, because her government’s backing for the religious militants was spoiling Islamabad’s relations with Tehran.

“She told me that as a woman she was unable to assert herself because she knew what they thought of women. Besides, they had a vast presence in the madressahs, and for that reason she was unable to control them”. Talking to a Pakistani media delegation, the former Iranian president and now head of the powerful Expediency Council, said Afghanistan was the single biggest cause of differences between Pakistan and Iran, and the two governments seemed to have distanced themselves. This was regrettable, he said, because –- if handled carefully -- Afghanistan had the potential to strengthen the friendship between Pakistan and Iran since both had a stake in that country’s stability.

Asked by Dawn whether it was Pakistan’s American connections which had soured relations between the two, Hojjatul Islam Rafsanjani said the deterioration in relations between the two had begun even before 9/11.

At one stage, he said, Pakistan and Iran were working for a common goal. While Iran was supporting Shia militias in the north, Pakistan was backing the Taliban, their common aim being to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But once the Soviets pulled back, Pakistan came on the side of the Taliban, whom he called narrow-minded. Told that a reversal of Pakistan’s policy toward the Taliban had become inevitable after 9/11, Rafsanjani said “you could have done this without bringing the Americans in”. Nevertheless, Pakistan’s cooperation with the US in the war on terror had served to weaken Islamabad’s relations with Tehran.

He was clear in his mind that Iran believed its relations with Pakistan were more important than Tehran’s ties with Kabul. Even now the two countries had a stake in Afghanistan, since lawlessness in that country had led to a phenomenal increase in poppy cultivation and the consequent increase in drug trade. “When I was president, I was not satisfied with the level of our bilateral relations, even though the Taliban were not there on the scene. I was keen on the pipeline project materialising, and we used to call it ‘peaceline’. But (since my departure from the office of president), things have not moved forward, and the bilateral relations have either been static or further gone down.”

However, the misunderstanding between the two countries was at the state level, and so far as the peoples of the two countries were concerned, there were no differences. As president he had excellent relations with both the government and the opposition. As an example, he pointed out that when he visited the National Assembly, the opposition walked out and refused to listen to Ms Bhutto, but when he rose to speak the opposition came back.

The former president attacked the United States for pursuing policies that were destabilising the entire Middle East and said Washington’s policies in Afghanistan and Iran had failed, and terrorism had spread its tentacles to Somalia. Now the entire region from Afghanistan to Lebanon was in turmoil.

The United States, he said, wanted to change the Middle East’s map, but the events in Iraq and Afghanistan and what happened last July-August in Lebanon had demonstrated clearly that America had failed in its aim. He feared that America would leave behind it in the Middle East enormous problems, because the Americans have proved themselves to be “more destructive than the Taliban”.

The Expediency Council (Tashkhees-i-Maslehat-i-Nizam), which Rafsanjani heads, plays a key role in breaking a deadlock if the Guardian Council, the parliament and the government fail to agree on a constitutional or political issue in a country which has several centres of power.