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Iran recalls EU ambassadors over German court ruling

April 13, 1997
Web posted at: 1:35 p.m. EDT (1735 GMT)

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran says it will recall its ambassadors from European Union states that have summoned their Tehran envoys home for consultation after a German court's ruling that the Islamic republic ordered political killings in Berlin.

EU members, except for Greece, recalled their ambassadors after Thursday's court ruling that top officials in Iran had ordered the 1992 killings of Iranian-Kurdish leaders at a Berlin restaurant. Tehran's ambassador to Greece will remain in Athens.

In Bonn, German officials called for Iran to respect international law.

"We do not want an end to relations which have existed for over 100 years," said Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. "And, as upset as we are, we do not want to pour oil on the flames."

Rafsanjani

Iranian officials, while rejecting the court's ruling, have not called for a freeze to diplomatic relations. President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called the flap "a passing storm," but Iran's deputy speaker of the parliament, Hassan Rowhani, called on the government to stop investment plans in eastern Germany.

Germany has been Iran's closest Western ally and biggest trade partner.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians marched in noisy demonstrations across Iran Sunday, Tehran radio reported, calling for the downfall of Germany over Thursday's court ruling. Outside the German embassy in Tehran, protesters condemned Germany as "fascist" and a "servant of Zionism."

Many of the protesters blamed the United States as well as Israel for the verdict.

The protesters demanded that Germany apologize for the ruling. The ruling implicated Rafsanjani and Iran's spiritual leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Both men belonged to Iran's Committee for Special Operations, which Presiding Judge Frithjof Kubsch said ordered the gangland-style killings of Iranian-Kurdish leader Sadiq Sarafkindi and three of his colleagues.

 
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