Iran has rejected as 'Zionist propaganda' charges by Argentine prosecutors that Tehran and Hizbullah were behind the 1994 bombing of a Jewish charities office in Buenos Aires, media reported on Friday.
"Iran rejects the claims by ... the Argentine prosecutors," Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini was quoted as saying.
"The new Zionist propaganda is done with political intentions, and the negative fabrication aims to spread division between the Iranian and Argentinean people," he said.
"It wants to divert the anti-Israeli atmosphere among Argentinean public opinion from the Zionists' aggression against Lebanese and Palestinian people," Hosseini added.
On Wednesday, Argentine prosecutors charged Iran and Hizbullah with the 1994 attack on AMIA (the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association) that killed 85 people and injured 300.
They demanded an international arrest warrant for then-Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and six other top Iranian officials at the time of the attack, and a former Hizbullah foreign security service chief, Imad Fayez Moughnieh.
AMIA, supported by Israel and the United States, had long accused Iran of organising the attack and getting Hizbullah to carry it out.
Those accusations, based on intelligence gathered by the secret services of Argentina, Israel and the US, have been consistently rejected by the Iranian government and Hizbullah.
In a country with a murky record in pursuing the 12-year-old case, relatives and friends of the victims called on President Nestor Kirchner to take swift and strong action to bring it to trial.
Investigation of the bombing has been a festering issue in Argentina.
On September 2, 2004, an Argentine court acquitted 21 former police officers and a trafficker of stolen cars who were charged with aiding the attackers. The court found that important evidence against the men had been "irregularly" obtained, and ordered an investigation of Judge Juan Jose Galeano, who presided over the case for nine years.
Galeano was accused of having paid 400,000 dollars to a key witness to testify against four police officers accused of having provided logistical support in the plot.
Hosseini in his commnents reported Friday added that "the corruption of Galeano" is another proof that "such claims (against Iran) are baseless."