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Accused Iranian

diplomats prepare

to leave Turkey

ANKARA: Four Iranian diplomats accused by Turkey of involvement in the killing of secular figures and ordered withdrawn by Ankara said on Thursday they were preparing to go home.

"There has been no official order for us to return, but we have begun preparations. For us to stay on in Turkey after this would be a diplomatic embarrassment," Mohsen Karagier Azad, press attache at Iran's consulate in Istanbul, told Reuters.

Iran on Wednesday asked Turkey to recall four Turkish envoys Tehran accused of spying in the latest round of a row between the two neighbours, sparked by charges last month that Iran could be behind a series of killings in Turkey.

Turkey said the spy claims were baseless, but that it would withdraw its diplomats for security reasons and asked Iran to bring home its diplomats, originally implicated by the media.

"I have no connection with the incidents," Azad said. "I deny what has been written about me."

"First Turkey leaked the incidents to the press. Newspapers published our names and pictures. Iran, too, must appease its public. Turkey accused Iranian diplomats of murder and terror. Turkey says its diplomats' lives are not safe. Well here our lives are not safe," he said.

Shi'ite Moslem Iranians and Sunni Turks have been regional rivals for centuries but the Iranian Islamic republic and NATO-member, secular Turkey have remained on reasonably good terms in recent years.

Relations were damaged last month when Turkish police said that a Turkish Islamist hitman, who confessed to killing two Iranian dissidents in Turkey in 1992, had received training in Iran. Iran denied the accusation.

Turkish foreign ministry assistant undersecretary Ali Tuygan returned to Ankara on Thursday after a three-day visit to Tehran, where he went to question Iranian authorities on the hitman claims and ask for the four diplomats to be withdrawn.

Tuygan said the spy charges were unconvincing, and brought simply as a counter-measure to Turkey's accusations.-Reuter