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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 13, 1993                   TAG: 9302130058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A12   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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FUGITIVE AUTHOR RUSHDIE HAILS U.S. STAND ON IRAN

Author Salman Rushdie said Friday that recent policy changes in Britain and the United States make him more optimistic than he's been in four years that Iran will be forced to drop its order to Muslims to kill him.

Rushdie hailed a statement Thursday by President Clinton's spokesman George Stephanopoulos as an "enormous change" from the Bush administration's stance.

In an interview with the British periodical The Nation, Stephanopoulos said, "We do not believe that people should be killed for writing books," and the death order is "a violation of Mr. Rushdie's basic human rights and therefore a violation of international law."

Rushdie said in an interview in London shown Friday on the Cable News Network, "It now seems clear that the new administration is willing to throw its weight" behind efforts to force Iran to drop the death threat.

In 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the death of the Indian-born British writer for allegedly blaspheming Islam in his novel "Satanic Verses." A government-run charity which offered a $2 million reward to anyone who kills Rushdie last year increased the reward by an unspecified amount.

- Associated Press

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Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

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