TEHRAN, 7 December — Iran’s minister of culture, in a tit-for-tat measure, has called on police to fingerprint US journalists entering the country, the official IRNA news agency said yesterday. “Due to the recent insulting behavior of American officials toward Iranian citizens, which is happening more frequently, please require all American journalists, except those exempted by the Culture Ministry, to be fingerprinted,” IRNA quoted the minister, Ahmad Masjedjamei as saying in a letter to police. The United States earlier this year began enforcing a policy adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks requiring nationals from several countries in the Middle East, including Iran, to be fingerprinted and photographed upon arrival in the country. “The measure is a reaction to fingerprinting and bad treatment of Iranian citizens, especially Iranian artists and journalists arriving in the United States,” Masjedjamei said. Iranian journalists and artists have recently been facing difficulty obtaining US visas. An Iranian journalist was deported last month after arriving in Washington with what Iranian media said was a valid visa. (R)