Agencies/Tehran

Iran yesterday urged UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to intervene directly in a row sparked by America’s refusal to give Tehran’s chosen UN envoy a visa.

The spat over Hamid Abutalebi has undermined a cautious thaw in relations after decades of enmity following the storming of the US embassy in 1979 and the subsequent hostage crisis.

“We ask Mr Ban Ki-moon to step in and take the necessary action for resolving this issue,” deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told the official Irna news agency.

“The foreign ministry fully supports its pick and considers him an efficient, experienced and qualified person for this post and does not intend to nominate a new person,” he said of Abutalebi, who is a former ambassador to Australia, Italy and Belgium.

As the host government, the United States is obliged to issue visas to diplomats who serve at the United Nations. Abutalebi has previously attended sessions at the UN headquarters in New York.

Washington has said it will not issue a visa to Abutalebi because of his links to the students who seized the US embassy just months after the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Abutalebi has insisted he was not part of the hostage-taking although he has acknowledged that he served a limited role as a translator for the students.

The row comes as Tehran and world powers engage in negotiations aimed at transforming a temporary accord on Iran’s nuclear programme into a permanent agreement.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham reiterated the country’s position.

“The official mechanisms for lodging the complaint at the United Nations have been activated, and are under way,” she said in remarks published on state broadcaster IRIB’s website.

It is believed that the US has never previously denied a visa for a UN ambassador, although Tehran withdrew its nominee once in the early 1990s.

The US government can bar UN diplomats who are considered national security threats, but this potentially precedent-setting step could invite criticism that it is using its position as host nation to improperly exert political influence.

*A UN human rights monitor yesterday urged Tehran to halt the planned execution of an Iranian woman for the alleged murder of a former intelligence official, saying her trial had been deeply flawed.

The case of Reyhaneh Jabbari, who claims she acted in self-defence after a sexual assault, raises concerns because of her alleged forced confession and a court failure to consider all the evidence, said Ahmed Shaheed.

“The Iranian authorities should review her case and refer it back to court for a retrial, ensuring the defendant due process rights guaranteed under both Iranian law and international law,” said Shaheed, a human rights expert and former foreign minister of the Maldives.

Shaheed is tasked by the UN with monitoring Iran, and has regularly locked horns with the Islamic Republic over its human rights record.

Iran’s prosecutor general, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie, yesterday called reports that Jabbari would be executed within a couple of days “pure speculation”.

Her lawyer Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, quoted by the official Irna news agency, said an execution date has yet to be finalised, but that “her sentence will be carried out within a month if the victim’s family does not grant mercy”.

Jabbari, an interior designer, was sentenced to death for premeditated murder over the 2007 slaying of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former employee of the Iranian intelligence ministry.

Shaheed said in a statement that “reliable sources” had confirmed that Sarbandi had offered to hire Jabbari to redesign his office.

Sarbandi arranged to take Jabbari to his office, but instead took her to a residence where he sexually forced himself upon her, Shaheed said.

Jabbari reportedly stabbed Sarbandi in the shoulder in self-defence, fled for safety, and called for an ambulance out of concern for her alleged attacker.

Shaheed pointed to evidence including a medical report highlighting the presence of a tranquiliser in a glass of juice found at the crime scene, suggesting a sexual assault had been planned.

If her allegations are true, Shaheed said, Jabbari “may have been doubly victimised, first by her attacker, and then by the judicial system, which is supposed to protect victims of intended and actual sexual and physical assault”.