Iran berates German official over new president’s “terrorist” ties

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 23 – Iran fired another salvo at Germany on Saturday over comments by Germany’s Interior Ministry who on Monday expressed concern over the newly-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ties with terrorism, saying that Ahmadinejad was “an Islamic fundamentalist who does not have an absolute distance with terrorism”. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Jul. 23 – Iran fired another salvo at Germany on Saturday over comments by Germany’s Interior Ministry who on Monday expressed concern over the newly-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ties with terrorism, saying that Ahmadinejad was “an Islamic fundamentalist who does not have an absolute distance with terrorism”.

After lambasting the German Interior Minister on Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi trained his sights on Saturday on German Interior Ministry spokesman Rainer Lingenthal.

“On top of my previous recommendation that he should respect the rules of democracy, I have two other recommendations for [Lingenthal”>”, Asefi told reporters in Tehran. “Firstly, it is bad and rude for a politician to get angry. A politician must uphold his demeanour and express his stance in a civilised way”.

“My second recommendation is for him to pay attention to and follow the customary rules of diplomacy”, Asefi added.

The diplomatic spat between Tehran and Berlin heated up last week when Asefi charged that Schily was playing a role “in a Zionist conspiracy against the Islamic Republic of Iran”.

“I advise this German official to remove himself from being under the influence of Zionists”, he said.

The German Interior Minister’s spokesman responded promptly.

“It’s an unbelievable insolence that such a statement comes from a country where human rights are constantly violated, where women are publicly flogged after dubious sentences, and where dissidents are held in solitary confinement for months without the possibility of legal assistance”, the German official said.

Germany’s Interior Minister Otto Schily was a prominent defence lawyer for the victims’ families during the long trial of four terrorists suspected of assassinating four Iranian dissidents in Berlin in the 1990s. The court ruled that the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran had directly issued orders for the assassination of Iranian dissidents abroad.