14 December 2008: Kuwait Times
PARIS: A French official says the Iranian foreign minister has called off a visit to Paris after a diplomatic spat with France. The Iranian foreign ministry summoned the French ambassador to Tehran this week to protest remarks President Nicolas Sarkozy made about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A French Foreign Ministry official says Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had been due to meet his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, yesterday and to attend a foreign minister's conference on Afghanistan today. The official, who asked not to be named, citing department policy, said it was unclear who would represent Iran at the conference. Officials at the Iranian embassy in Paris were not available for comment.
An Iranian delegation did not show up as expected yesterday at a regional security forum in Bahrain that was addressed by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, organizers said. Kazem Jalali, chairman of the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs committee, was to have delivered a speech to The Manama Dialogue yesterday, the director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said. John Chipman, who said he had confirmed the attendance of Jalali and two Iranian diplomats during a recent visit to Tehran, told participants of the no-show just before Jalali was due to speak. In his speech, Gates said the United States was seeking a change of behaviour and not a regime change in Tehran, which is suspected by the international community of developing a nuclear program for military use. "What we are after is a change in policies and a change in behavior so that Iran becomes a good neighbor of people in the region (rather) than a source of instability and violence," Gates said.
