TEHRAN (AFP) - A visit to Iran by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, the first by a member of the British government since the 1979 Islamic revolution, postponed three times is still on the cards, the Iranian foreign ministry said Monday.
"The trip has not been cancelled but the date has not yet been fixed," foreign ministry spokesperson Hamid-Reza Asefi said, cited by the official IRNA news agency.
The third postponement was reported Saturday in the Qods newspaper, which said the visit would not now take place this year.
Cook called off a May visit as the date fell near the second round of Iran's parliamentary elections, while a re-scheduled trip in June had to be put off because of Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi's overloaded schedule.
Kharazi visited London in January, with the two nations having restored full diplomatic relations that had been strained by the Salman Rushdie affair.
Tehran said in 1998 that it would not seek to carry out the death sentence on the British author, which had been called for by Islamic Iran's late founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Khomeini called for Rushdie's death in 1989 over his satirical portrayal of prophet Mohammad in his novel, "The Satanic Verses," which infuriated Muslims worldwide.
