29 Mar 2024
Thursday 29 January 2015 - 12:28
Story Code : 148479

Argentine president renews support for AMIA agreement with Iran

TEHRAN (FNA)- Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner once again threw her weight behind the country's last year agreement with Iran on investigations into the 1994 bombing of the AMIA center in Buenos Aires.
President Fernandez de Kirchner made the comments on Tuesday night and on the anniversary of the agreement signed with Tehran.

Addressing the people of Argentina, President Fernandez de Kirchner reiterated that the agreement will help find a way for clarifying the unknowns of the bomb attack and finding the realities.

"Several judges and prosecutors who are pursuing the interests of certain companies and politicians of the opposition political party have tried to portray the MoU as illegal," the Argentine president said, explaining the hues and cries made by pro-Israeli lobby groups about the agreement.

Earlier this month, Argentinean Foreign Minister Hector Timmerman called a leading prosecutor a liar for accusing President Fernandez of secretly negotiating with Iran to help exonerate the country from involvement in the 1994 deadly bomb attack on the AMIA center in Buenos Aires.

Prosecutor Alberto Nisman had asked a judge to call Fernandez, Timmerman and others for questioning about the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

Timmerman called the prosecutor's accusations "despicable".

Reading from a statement, he said Fernandez had taken big strides "in the search and punishment of the perpetrators of the brutal attack".

The prosecutor's accusations "only demonstrate the level of confusion and paralysis" in the unsolved case, Timmerman said.

Under intense political pressure from the US and Israel, Argentina had formally accused Iran of having carried out the bomb attack of the AMIA building in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people in 1994. The Islamic Republic has categorically denied any involvement in the terrorist bombing.

On January 27, 2013, the former Iranian foreign minister and Timmerman signed an agreement to jointly probe into the bombing.

"This initiative has prevented some countries and political currents from interfering in our good relations with the Latin American states," former Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mehman-Parast said at the time.

He noted that Israel was trying to link the AMIA deadly incident to Iran, but Tehran's agreement with Buenos Aires prevented Tel Aviv from achieving its goal.

"The AMIA bombing is a fully suspicious case and no independent and impartial fact-finding mission had ever been commissioned to deal with it (before)," Mehman-Parast added.

After Iran and Argentina signed the deal over AMIA, the Israeli regime showed an angry reaction. "We are stunned by this news item and we will want to receive from the Argentine government a complete picture as to what was agreed upon because this entire affair affects Israel directly," Israel's then Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Yigal Palmor said on January 28, 2013.

In a statement on January 30, 2013, however, the Argentinean Foreign Ministry said Israel's demand for explanation over the agreement, described by Argentinean President Fernandez as "historic," was an "improper action that is strongly rejected".
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