US has no right to deny visa to Ahmadinejad, says Tehran

The Peninsula:

Web posted at: 8/8/2005 2:53:36

Source ::: AFP

TEHRAN: Iran said yesterday that the US has no right to deny a visa to its hardliner president, who has said he plans to visit the United Nations in New York next month to address the UN General Assembly world summit.

“The US has no legal or political rights” to deny a visa to ultraconservative President Mahmood Ahmadinejad, who took office on Wednesday, “and I hope the US would not commit such an error,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

Asefi was responding to a Financial Times report on Friday that quoted an unnamed US official as saying the “US is considering taking the unprecedented step of preventing a visiting head of state from addressing the United Nations in New York in September 2005 by denying a visa to Ahmadinejad.”

The paper added: “Officials said a decision rested on investigations into whether Mr Ahmadinejad was involved in the 1979 US embassy hostage crisis and the killing of an Iranian-Kurdish dissident leader in Vienna in 1989.”

Iran has repeatedly denied US allegations about Ahmadinejad’s possible role in the 1979 hostage-taking at the US embassy in Tehran following the Islamic revolution.

The US severed ties with Iran in April 1980 after a group of radical student followers of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the US embassy in Tehran and held 52 of its staff hostage for 444 days. Diplomatic relations remain cut to this day.