VIENNA - Embarrassed Austrian officials said Wednesday they were looking into an accusation -- dismissed as "ridiculous" by Tehran -- that Iranian president-elect Mahmood Ahmadinejad was involved in the 1989 murder of an Iranian Kurdish leader and two aides in Vienna.
The justice, foreign and interior ministries said they were checking the allegation, which was made public by environmentalist deputy Peter Pilz, who said he heard it from an unidentified Iranian journalist living in France in May.
"We have in no way begun proceedings" against Ahmadinejad, the justice ministry told AFP.
"We are checking whether this journalist quoted by Pilz actually exists."
"We received Tuesday an oral request from the prosecutor's office asking us to carry out checks," the interior ministry said.
The foreign ministry issued a statement saying no comment would be forthcoming until the checks had been completed.
But former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr, now in exile near Paris, said Wednesday he had met the journalist, whom he did not wish to identify, in the company of Pilz on May 20 and received from him a written account in Farsi of the affair.
The statement had been translated into German and handed over to the Austrian authorities.
Pilz charged on Saturday that Austria had documents proving that Ahmadinejad was directly involved in preparations for the murder of Kurdish chief Adbel Aahmane Ghassemlou, and the interior ministry later confirmed that it had received material from the deputy.
The Austrian authorities would neither confirm nor deny that Ahmadinejad was in Vienna at the relevant time.
The hardline Islamist Ahmadinejad was elected president last month. The government in Tehran summoned the Austrian ambassador Tuesday to demand an explanation of the charges, which it rejected as "ridiculous" and attributed to "Zionists" seeking to discredit Ahmadinejad's election victory.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi said the government "categorically denied" the accusation.
Pilz said he had received detailed information from the journalist, who said he interviewed a member of the alleged three-man execution squad, General Nasser Taghipoor who died three years ago.
Pilz, the Green party's spokesman on security issues, alleged that Ahmadinejad had been given the task of waiting outside the house where the murder was committed.
"He was part of the so-called reserve unit," Pilz told reporters, added that Ahmadinejad had also procured the two handguns and the machine-gun used in the attack.
Ghassemlou, who was secretary general of the Democratic Kurdish party of Iran, and his two aides were murdered on the direct orders of then President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, according to Pilz, citing his informant.
Ghassemlou's killers were believed to have left the country immediately and were never identified.
The public prosecutor's office has called on the journalist to come to Austria to help in the inquiry.
Observers say that Vienna is anxious not to compromise its good political and economic relations with Tehran.
Pilz claimed the coalition right and extreme right government in office in Austria was afraid of the Iranian reaction.
"Our ambassador (in Tehran) was given a dressing down Tuesday," Pliz said. "They asked for a declaration preserving the honour of President Ahmadinjead and my country complied. That's what the (Austrian) foreign ministry statement really means."
"The Austrian and Iranian governments have decided to work together to smother the affair," Pilz said. "It's a media mystification, disinformation."
07/06/2005 17:47 GMT