Putin told of  Iranian 'assassination bid'*

 October 2007

Vladimir Putin is due to visit Iran later this week

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been warned of a plot to
assassinate him during a visit to Iran this week, Kremlin officials have
said.

The Interfax news agency cited sources in the Russian special services
saying a gang of suicide bombers would attempt to kill Mr Putin in Tehran.

Iran's foreign ministry dismissed the reports as "completely baseless".

A Kremlin spokesman told Reuters there were no plans to cancel the trip
to meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

During his visit, Mr Putin will also attend a summit of Caspian Sea nations.

He will be the first Russian president to travel to Iran since Joseph
Stalin attended a summit of the Allied Powers in 1943.

Mr Putin is currently in Germany meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel and is
due to fly on to Tehran on Monday night.

'Erroneous reports'

Interfax reported that Russian special services said several groups of
suicide bombers had been set up for the attack in Tehran.

The reports in some media are completely baseless and part of a
psychological war waged by enemies to disrupt relations between Iran and
Russia-Mohammed Ali Hosseini, Iranian foreign ministry

The services had relied on information received from several sources
outside the country, the agency said.

Kremlin deputy spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters the trip was still
going ahead as far as he was aware.

"The information is being dealt with by the secret services... The
president has been informed," he said.

A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, Mohammed Ali Hosseini,
said the reports were completely baseless and "part of a psychological
war waged by enemies to disrupt relations between Iran and Russia".

"Such erroneous reports will have no effect on the programme already
decided upon for Mr Putin's visit to Tehran," he said.

Correspondents say Moscow and Tehran have good relations and Russia is
helping to build the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran.

'Radical organisations'

A member of the Russian parliament's security committee, Gennadiy
Gudkov, said the reports were likely to have a "fairly high level of
reliability".

"For me this report has not come as a big revelation, because,
unfortunately, today there are enough radical organisations, forces and
movements of an extremist nature, oriented against Russia, which would
like to settle a score with the Russian president," he told the
state-owned Russian news channel, Vesti TV.

"There are certainly organisations of this kind in Tehran, which in
recent times has unfortunately been a stronghold of radical Islamic
organisations," he said.

Russian officials have said several plots to assassinate Mr Putin on
foreign trips have been uncovered since he became president in December
1999.

Shortly after his election, Ukrainian security services said they had
foiled an attempt to kill Mr Putin at an informal summit of former
Soviet republics in Yalta.