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Iranian President Starts Visit to Germany
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami arrived in Berlin on Monday for a state visit to Germany by the highest official of the Persian Gulf country in more than three decades.
Khatami was greeted at the airport by German President Johnannes Rau and is scheduled to hold talks with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as well as Rau and address German businessmen in the next two days. He will also visit Weimar to pay tribute to a late Iranian poet buried there.
During the 1967 visit to West Berlin by then Iranian ruler Shah Pahlavi, there were clashes among Pahlavi's supporters, opponents and police, leading to the death of one German student.
As Iranian exiles planned large-scale demonstration to disrupt Khatami's visit, the Berlin authorities took highest security measures for the event, reportedly with some Iranians turned back at the checkpoints along the border between Germany and other countries and some arrests here overnight.
The German-Iranian relations were marred in the 1990s by a German court's charge of terrorism against the Iranian government and the arrest of German businessman Kaufmann Hofer in Tehran. The release of Hofer in January this year and the visit by German Foreign Minister Joschhka Fischer to Iran in May paved the way for the improvement of bilateral relations.
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