By DPA
Tehran : French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner Friday called Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani to clarify his comments, which were widely interpreted as war rhetoric against Iran, state television network IRIB reported.
IRIB quoted Kouchner as regretting the media interpretation of his comments and said what he meant was adopting ways to prevent war.
He reiterated his wish to visit Tehran to clear up all misunderstanding, IRIB said.
IRIB further quoted the French minister as supporting the agreement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and even proposing a visit by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei to Tehran to remove all ambiguities over Iran’s nuclear programmes.
Larijani in return said that Iran disliked what was said in the press on his behalf.
IRIB did not disclose further details of the phone contact between Larijani and Kouchner.
An Iranian ayatollah earlier Friday called on France not to follow the hostile policies of the United States towards Iran.
“France should be careful as the American rope is decaying and taking this rope would lead to a hard fall,” Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said during the Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran.
“France should learn from the failed experience of the British government which followed the US into the Iraq invasion and was eventually toppled by its own people,” the ayatollah added.
Khatami, who is close to the country’s hardliners and a member of the clerical body of the Experts Assembly, further blamed the local media for having exaggerated the war rhetoric of Kouchner.
Later however the Iranian Foreign Ministry and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played down Kouchner’s comments as “not serious” and called them incompatible with the general policies of the European Union, which preferred a diplomatic settlement of the nuclear dispute.
“He (Kouchner) is a newcomer and he just said something irrelevant. The Iranian media should not have made a great deal out of it,” Khatami said.
The ayatollah also referred to Kouchner’s plans to come to Tehran “for damage control”, saying people were tired of his “loud regrets over what he said”.