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Iran Terrorist FM to visit Turkey on Friday
Tehran, Iran, Aug. 10 Irans Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki will travel to Istanbul on Friday to hold talks with Turkish officials on the crisis in Lebanon, the official news agency IRNA reported on Thursday. Mottaki will also discuss the events in Palestine, the report said.Fridays trip will be Mottakis second visit to Turkey since he became Foreign Minister. Mottaki has a chequered history in Turkey and was once expelled for his involvement in terrorism when he was the Islamic Republics ambassador to Ankara. Mottaki, 53, has been accused of involvement in a series of terrorist attacks in Turkey in the late 1980s, according to Iranian exiles and defectors from the theocratic regime. Turkish authorities had asked him to leave the country in 1989, when he was Irans ambassador in Ankara, after his role in several terrorist incidents in Turkey became known. Mottaki was appointed Irans ambassador to Turkey in 1985 and it was during his tenure in Ankara that the Revolutionary Guard-turned-diplomat became involved in a number of terror attacks and assassinations of dissidents, according to Iranian opposition figures and defectors. In the 1980s and the early 1990s, at least 50 Iranian dissidents were kidnapped or assassinated in Turkey by Iranian secret agents often working closely with diplomats from Irans embassy and consulates. On Mottakis watch, the Iranian embassy in Ankara and the consulate-general in Istanbul were turned into safe houses for agents of Irans notorious secret police hunting down Iranian dissidents, according to exiles.
Posted by: Steve White 2006-08-11 |
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