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 TEHRAN (AFP) — Iraqi parliament speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani arrived in the Iranian capital on Tuesday, a day after his plane was refused permission to land in Tehran, state television reported.
Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab, was to meet his Iranian opposite number, Ali Larijani, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi on Tuesday. He was also to hold talks with Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and head of the Expediency Council, Iran's top arbitration panel, and national security chief Said Jalili on Wednesday, the final day of the visit. A spokesman for the Iranian parliament, Mohsen Kouhkan, said Mashhadani's aircraft had been turned away on Monday for technical reasons rather than any objections to the visit to Shiite-dominated Iran. "The reason that permission to land was not given to the aircraft carrying Mashhadani was the type of the plane," Kouhkan told the official IRNA news agency. "It had nothing to do with him." |
