28 Sep 2003 14:37:04 GMT
Iran says Israel engineered arrest of ex-envoy
TEHRAN, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Iran on Sunday accused Israel of being behind Britain's arrest of a former Iranian diplomat, following a press report that the ex-envoy could be used as a bargaining chip to get information on a missing Israeli airman.
Hadi Soleimanpour, Iran's ex-ambassador to Argentina, was arrested in Britain in August in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.
Asked about an Israeli newspaper article that said Soleimanpour could be traded for information on an airman whose disappearance in 1986 Israel blames on Iran-backed Hizbollah, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said:
"The Zionist regime's behaviour, saying they are ready to swap him for some Israelis, completely proves Israel was behind it (Soleimanpour's arrest)."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, speaking in a TV interview on Thursday, said Israel had some bargaining chips for prisoner swaps that the Iranians would be very keen to get.
When asked to elaborate, Sharon said: "All I can say is that it is not here in Israel, it is in a European state."
Although this may refer to Britain, Germany also holds in jail an Iranian convicted of murdering four Kurdish dissidents in Berlin's Mykonos restaurant in 1992, an attack a German court said was ordered from Tehran.
Soleimanpour's arrest has strained relations between London and Tehran which denies any involvement in the Buenos Aires bombing. Britain has allowed several of its diplomats to leave Tehran temporarily after a series of shooting incidents at its diplomatic mission apparently related to the Soleimanpour case.
Israel holds Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group and its Iranian backers responsible for the fate of navigator Ron Arad whose warplane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. Hizbollah has repeatedly denied having any information on him.
Asefi said the Islamic Republic was not involved.
"The issue of Israeli hostages has nothing to do with Iran," he told reporters at a weekly press conference.
Hizbollah said on Saturday it had met in Beirut with Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad to discuss an exchange of prisoners with Israel.
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