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After Bush, Iranian president writes to Merkel TEHRAN, July 19 (AFP) Jul 19, 2006 Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the official news agency IRNA reported Wednesday, two months after penning an angry missive to US President George W. Bush. Irna, which did not reveal the letter's content, said the message had been handed to the German charge d'affaires in Tehran by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who visited Berlin in June. Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush in early May interrupted a 26-year break in top-level contacts with arch-foe the United States, but offered no concessions in the nuclear dispute raging between Tehran and world powers. In his 18-page message, the firebrand leader lashed out at the US-led invasion of Iraq, questioned Israel's right to exist, mapped out the Islamic republic's unswerving drive to master nuclear technology and even told Bush, a born-again Christian, he should be more pious. In a speech carried on state television in April, Ahmadinejad complained that Germany was being exploited by "greedy Zionists" more than 60 years after World War II. "Look at the German people. Three generations ago, there was a war. But today an intelligent people is still a hostage of World War II," he said. Germany, he said, "still doesn't have the right to have independent policies or proper defenses." "Every German born is indebted to the arrogant and greedy Zionists," Ahmadinejad said, referring to German reparations for the Holocaust. "When you visit a country, in every town there is a symbol of national pride," Ahmadinejad said, but added that in Germany "every town has something saying to the great German people that their parents and grandparents were murderers." Germany has been working with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- to try to convince Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment. Europe and the United States fear Tehran is seeking to build a nuclear weapon under the cover of its nuclear energy program -- something Iran denies. All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.
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