British Politician Calls For End To.....

British Politician Calls For End To Police Protection For Rushdie

LONDON (AFP) - A British politician Thursday called on the government to stop "wasting money" and end police protection for author Salman Rushdie, condemned to death by Iran for his book "The Satanic Verses."

The Indian-born Rushdie, who lived in Britain, was given 24-hour police protection in 1989 after Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sentenced him to death for alleged blasphemy against Islam.

The death sentence was accompanied by the promise of a hefty bounty for anyone who killed the writer. Speaking on BBC radio, Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, an Asian Muslim peer of the Labor party, criticized the fact that British taxpayers were still paying for the author's bodyguards, 11 years later.

Rushdie has now moved to the United States, but it is understood that the British government still pays about one million pounds ($1.41 million) a year for the author's protection.

"Money which is being wasted on Salman Rushdie could be better spent on providing bobbies [policemen] on the beat rather than wasting our money on someone who is wealthy enough anyway and who could provide protection to himself," said Lord Ahmed.

"It gives the wrong signal that British Muslims are still after Salman Rushdie and it gives him that importance. Muslims in Britain are not even interested, they don't even want to know," he added.

Lord Ahmed provides advice to the government on race matters.

Labor member of parliament Robin Corbett, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, meanwhile said he would call on Foreign Secretary Robin Cook for clarification following the latter's claim to have won an undertaking from Tehran not to implement Khomeini's "fatwa."

Cook said he won such an undertaking from his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharazi, in late 1998.

"On the one hand we have got the foreign secretary saying we have got to have this constructive engagement with the Iranian regime," Corbett said.

"On the other hand, nobody seems to have told the Home Office who are budgeting to spend one million pounds looking after Mr. Rushdie. The two things can't hang together. Either the foreign secretary on behalf of the government is accepting the word of the Iranian foreign minister or it is not," the MP told the BBC.

Rushdie, 53, who lived in seclusion in London for 10 years under 24-hour police protection, is now reported to have moved to New York where he is dating a 29-year-old model.