Iran has summoned the French envoy to Tehran to protest at critical comments by President Nicolas Sarkozy about his counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, state television reported on Thursday.
Sarkozy, whose government has taken a tough stance against Tehran over its nuclear drive, said he could not even sit at the same table as Ahmadinejad and that he does not represent the people of Iran.
The foreign ministry summoned Bernard Poletti on Wednesday to express “its strong objections to the recent interfering comments by the French president,” according to a ministry statement read on state television.
The ministry also said it warned Poletti “about the repercussion on bilateral relations of any repetition of such ill-considered remarks.”
Sarkozy said it was “impossible for me to shake hands with someone who has dared to say that Israel should be wiped off the map,” and that he would not “sit at the same table (as Ahmadinejad).”
His comments were made on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to the French presidency website.
Iran does not recognise Israel and Ahmadinejad has caused outrage by saying the Jewish state was a “cancerous tumour” and should disappear and that the Holocaust was a “myth”.
