March 9, 2003

Iran Denies Role in 1994 Argentina Bombing

By REUTERS

Filed at 9:01 a.m. ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Foreign Ministry denied on Sunday accusations that officials from the Islamic Republic were involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina that killed 85 people, state media said.

An Argentine federal judge on Friday asked Interpol to arrest four Iranians, including the country's former intelligence minister, for alleged involvement in the bomb attack on the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

``As we have already said, Iran had no role in the Argentine incident and so far no evidence had been provided for Iran's involvement,'' Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying by state radio.

``We will hold talks with the Argentine government within the next few days, and if the Argentine government fails to make up for its mistake, Iran will adopt appropriate measures,'' Asefi told a news conference attended by local journalists.

Argentine Federal Judge Juan Jose Galeano issued the arrest warrants for Ali Fallahian, the former Iranian intelligence minister, Mohsen Rabbani, the former cultural attache at the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires, Ali Balesh Abadi, a diplomat, and Ali Akbar Parvaresh, a former education minister.

Fallahian, a mid-ranking Shi'ite cleric who is also sought by German authorities for the 1992 murder of four Kurdish dissidents in Berlin, is currently a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts which selects the Islamic state's Supreme Leader.

Parvaresh is currently a central council member of Iran's Islamic Coalition Society, an ultra conservative party.

It was not known where the other two officials now lived and worked.

The 400-page detention order accused the suspects of ideological and logistical links to the attack.

The conservative English language Tehran Times said on Sunday the Argentine ruling was the result of pressures and interference by Israeli and U.S. officials.

``Given the fact that the perpetrators of the bomb attack have not yet been identified and arrested, how is it possible that Iran could have ideologically supported the unidentified people or groups who carried out the operation?'' the newspaper said in an editorial.

The Interpol office in Argentina would neither confirm nor deny that it had received a request to detain the four suspects.

Three of the four accused were in the country at the time of the car bomb attack, an Argentine judicial source said, without identifying which three men.

Last July, quoting a key witness in the case, The New York Times reported that Iran paid Argentina's then-President Carlos Menem a $10 million bribe to cover up the Iranian role in the bombing. Menem denied the allegation.

Argentina's Jewish community is 300,000-strong, the biggest in Latin America and the seventh-largest in the world.