Iran Denies Role In '94 Argentina Bombing

Iran accused five Argentines with falsely implicating a group of Iranians in the 1994 terrorist bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, state IRNA news agency said Tuesday.

Tehran ordered the five who live in Argentina to appear in an Iranian court. The action came a week after Interpol granted a request from Argentina to put five Iranians and one Lebanese man on its most-wanted list for the 1994 blast that killed 85 people and wounded 200.

Officials in Argentina dismissed the Iranian allegations and request for the five to appear in Iran.

"This request by Iran won't have any effect," Argentine Jewish leader Jose Adaszko said in Buenos Aires. "The international community understands that it doesn't make any sense and it only serves to cause confusion."

Iran strongly denies the Iranians were involved and has accused Interpol of bowing to U.S. and Israeli pressure to issue the warrants.

IRNA, in a report carried on its English-language Web site, said the five Argentines who must appear at the Tehran Justice Department are former Interior Minister Carlos Corach; president of the Jewish center Ruben Beraja; Judge Juan Jose Galeano; prosecutor Eamon Mullen and a fifth man, identified only as Jose Barbaccia.

The report cited Iranian Deputy Prosecutor General, Yadollah Alizadeh, as saying Iran would demand Interpol issue arrest warrants for them if they do not appear.

Alizadeh was quoted as saying the five Argentines have been charged with making a case against Tehran and hiring individuals of "anti-government affiliations" to testify against Iran.

No one has been brought to justice for the July 18, 1994 bombing at the center when an explosives-laden van detonated, leveling the seven-story building.

Argentine prosecutors contend the plot was hatched at a 1993 meeting in Mashad, Iran, and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah was entrusted with carrying it out.

They say witness accounts, other testimony and telephone and travel documents prove the meeting occurred.

Iran says it has evidence showing such a meeting never took place and pledged this week to defend the wanted Iranians, despite the Argentine arrest warrants.

Interpol can not force countries to arrest or extradite suspects, but can put government leaders on the spot for letting suspects move freely.

The dispute is steeped in geopolitical drama at a time of high tension between Iran and the West over Tehran's suspect nuclear program and U.S. claims that Iran is supplying weapons to insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, claims that the Islamic Republic denies.

The five wanted Iranians are Iran's former intelligence chief, a former cultural attache in Tehran's embassy in Argentina, a former Iranian diplomat, a former head of the elite paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, and a Guards' general.

Interpol also named Lebanese Hezbollah militant Imad Moughnieh, one of the world's most sought terrorism suspects, among those wanted in the bombing.