MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Iran strongly rejects Argentine prosecutors' accusation

Iran strongly rejected Argentine prosecutor charges against former high-level Iranian officials over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires.

"We reject the allegations of Argentina's Justice", said Mohammed Ali Hosseini spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Affairs ministry, adding that "the Islamic Republic of Iran has been and is victim of many attacks", according to a release Thursday in Teheran from the official news agency IRNA.

"It's essential that Argentine officials avoid repeating errors committed in the past with apocryphal documents and listen to all opinions", underlined the Ali Hosseini.

Argentine prosecutors are calling for the arrest of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and seven other top officials including of the then Minister of Foreign Affairs and the head of Intelligence.

Iranian authorities are accused of directing Lebanese militia group Hezbollah to carry out the attack in downtown Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and injuring 300. Speaking on state radio, foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hoseyni said: "The new fabrications are conducted within the framework of a Zionist plot."

Mr Hoseyni said the charges were intended to divert "world attention from the perpetration of crimes by the Zionists against women and children in Palestine".

The blast, on 18 July 1994, reduced the seven-storey Jewish-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) community centre to rubble. No one has ever been convicted of the attack, but the current government of President Nestor Kirchner has said it is determined to secure justice.

Argentine Jewish groups have long said the bombing bore the hallmarks of Iranian-backed Islamic militants. However Iran has repeatedly and vehemently denied any involvement in the attack.

Last November, an Argentine prosecutor said a member of Hezbollah was behind the attack and had been identified in a joint operation by Argentine intelligence and the FBI. But Hezbollah said that the man, Ibrahim Hussein Berro, had died in southern Lebanon while fighting Israel.