TEHRAN, 6 July 2005 — Iran summoned the Austrian ambassador to the Foreign Ministry yesterday in protest at charges its President-elect Mahmood Ahmadinejad was involved in the 1989 murder of an Iranian Kurdish leader in Vienna. “These accusations are ridiculous and unfounded, and for this reason we have summoned the Austrian ambassador to the Foreign Ministry to ask him for an explanation,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi told AFP.
“We categorically deny these accusations which are part of a scenario made up by Zionist circles unhappy with the high turnout of Iranians” in last month’s presidential elections, he said. “In international norms, it is not acceptable for anyone to make unjust accusations and to drag the courts behind him,” he said.
Austrian legal authorities said earlier yesterday that they wanted to interview an Iranian journalist living in France who claims to have evidence that Ahmadinejad was involved in the assassination of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou. “If the witness is ready to come to Austria, the Austrian security services will listen to him,” a spokesman for the Austrian public prosecutor’s office, Ernst Kloiber, told AFP.
Meanwhile, Iran’s top nuclear official said yesterday he was not optimistic the Islamic state would accept a proposal from the European Union next month concerning the long-term future of the country’s nuclear program. “The Europeans have low capability to solve this case. I am not optimistic their proposal will capture Iran’s interest,” Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told the semi-official ISNA students news agency.
“Talks will reach a very sensitive stage from now on. It will not go smoothly,” Aghazadeh said. The next round of talks coincide with a change of government in Iran following Ahmadinejad’s landslide presidential election win on June 24.
Ahmadinejad, who takes office on Aug. 4, has said Iran will continue its talks with the EU over the nuclear program and that both sides must seek to gain each other’s trust. But some European diplomats have expressed concern his government will harden Iran’s stance on the nuclear issue, making a deal harder to achieve.
