Iran sees smears from U.S., Israel

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TEHRAN -- Iran accused the U.S. and Israel yesterday of a smear campaign against its president-elect and warned Europe, which is in sensitive nuclear negotiations with Tehran, not to join in the mudslinging.

The ultraconservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won a landslide presidential election victory, has been accused of being one of the radical students who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking American hostages, in 1979. Iranian exiles and an Austrian politician are reputing he was involved in the 1989 slaying of a Kurdish leader and two associates in Vienna.

Iranian officials have denied both accusations.

"The charges are so evidently false that they don't deserve an answer. It's clear that it's mere lies," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said yesterday at a press conference in Tehran.

"Europeans should show their political maturity and not intertwine their interests with those of the Americans. They are advised to seriously avoid interference in this issue," Mr. Asefi warned. "We advise the Europeans not to fall into the trap of the Zionist media."

The Iranian warning came as France, Germany and Britain lead efforts by the European Union to persuade Tehran to permanently halt nuclear enrichment activities, which the United States claims are part of Iran's plan to develop a nuclear arsenal.

The Europeans are offering economic incentives in hopes of persuading Iran to permanently freeze its enrichment program on its own to avoid U.N. intervention and sanctions.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, the former mayor of Tehran, has said Iran will not curtail its nuclear program and will restart uranium enrichment activities, which it voluntarily suspended in November as part of negotiations with the Europeans.

In 1979, Mr. Ahmadinejad was a member of the Office of Strengthening Unity, the student organization that planned the Tehran Embassy takeover. Six former hostages who saw the president-elect in a 1979 photo or on television said they thought Mr. Ahmadinejad was among the captors who held them for 444 days, and one said he was interrogated by Mr. Ahmadinejad.

The president-elect has denied he was one of the hostage takers.

On Saturday, Saeed Hajjarian, a top former secret agent and a senior adviser to outgoing reformist President Mohammed Khatami, also denied the charge and identified the captor in the pictures as a former militant who committed suicide in prison years ago.

A different set of accusations against Mr. Ahmadinejad emerged on Saturday in Austria. The newspaper Der Standard quoted a top official in Austria's Green Party as saying authorities have "very convincing" evidence linking Mr. Ahmadinejad to the 1989 slaying of Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou, an Iranian opposition Kurdish leader, in Vienna. Exiled Iranian dissidents made the same accusations.