Argentine officials met on Monday with Iran's representative to Buenos Aires to demand confirmation -- or denial -- of reports that Tehran had ordered the arrest of Argentine investigators behind warrants issued against senior Iranian officials for a deadly 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires.
Argentina's foreign ministry issued a statement saying that officials met with Iran's charge d'affairs Mohsen Baharvand, to demand that his government "ratify or rectify" a report on Iranian state radio on Sunday that Iran's attorney general has asked for arrest warrants against the "prosecutor, former judge Juan Jose Galeano, and his accomplices."
Galeano stood accused of "taking bribes to falsify evidence against officials of the Islamic republic," the Iranian radio quoted the attorney general as saying, adding that the money had come from "Zionist circles."
Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral on November 9 issued an international arrest warrant for Iran's former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and other former top Tehran officials in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish charity in Argentina that killed 85 people and injured 300.
Lawyers for the Jewish charity have long accused the Iran-backed Shia militia Hizbullah, based in Lebanon, of carrying out the attack.
At the meeting, a top Argentine foreign ministry official gave Baharvand a letter "categorically rejecting" Iranian charges that their investigation into the bombing was politically biased and lacked the necessary legal jurisdiction.
Relations between Argentina and Iran are at a low point, and both countries are represented in each others capital by charge d'affairs instead of ambassadors.