Historic handshake denied
2005-04-09 12:12
Tehran - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami strongly denied shaking hands and chatting with Israeli President Moshe Katsav at Pope John Paul II's funeral, state-run media reported on Saturday.
But while Iran "morally and logically" doesn't recognise Israel, Khatami said the Islamic republic, which backs several anti-Israeli militant groups, will not interfere in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Following the pope's mass funeral on Friday, Katsav said he shook hands and chatted briefly with Khatami and Bashar Assad, leaders of Israel's arch-enemies, Iran and Syria.
Syria on Friday confirmed the handshake between Syrian president Assad and Katsav, but downplayed its political significance.
But after returning to Iran, Khatami denied shaking Katsav's hand.
"These allegations are false like other allegations made by Israeli media and I have not had any meeting with any one from Zionist (Israeli) regime," the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Khatami as saying.
Israeli media reported on Friday that during the Pope's funeral ceremony, Khatami held brief talks with Katzav, which some suggested was a small breakthrough between the leaders of two nations that have had no relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran toppled the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who held close ties with Israel.
The Iranian-born Katsav said he and Khatami conversed about Yazd, the region in central Iran where both men were born. "The two of us were born in the same region in Iran, two years apart," Katsav was quoted as saying. Iranian-born Katsav said he spoke in his native Farsi to Khatami about their common city of birth.
"The president of Iran extended his hand to me, I shook it and told him in Farsi, 'May peace be upon you'," Katsav said.
Won't meddle
Friday's funeral at St Peter's Square brought the biggest array of world leaders in history to bid farewell to the pope at a service drawing millions to Rome for one of the largest religious gatherings of modern times.
Khatami reiterated Iran's opposition to Israel, but said his country won't meddle in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
"As long as the Palestinian nation doesn't feel that its rights have been met, no peace plan will succeed but we won't interfere," the radio quoted Khatami as saying upon his return from Italy.
Iran and Israel have been bitter enemies for years - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called Israel a "cancerous tumour" that must be wiped out from the world map.
Iran is accused of supporting Lebanon's Shiite Muslim militant group, Hezbollah, which fought Israeli soldiers until they withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. It continues to launch occasion attacks against Israeli troops in a disputed parcel of land on the southern Lebanese border.
- AP