Publish Date: 27 May 2003 - 22:18

TEHRAN -- Iran warned Washington on Tuesday to stay out of its internal affairs, amid U.S. newspaper reports the White House was contemplating stirring up a revolt against the Islamic Republic.

"We hope logic and reason will prevail in the Americans' debates and that they will avoid taking an interventionist stance," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi told AFP.
Reacting to media accounts of the new White House policy, Assefi said: "We do not know to what degree this information is true. But we have always told the Americans to avoid meddling in our internal affairs."
Iran and the United States broke off relations after Tehran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran has insisted it has no links to Al-Qaeda and said it arrested and quickly extradited hundreds of Al-Qaeda members fleeing the 1991 U.S. attack on Afghanistan, which the group had formerly used as its operations hub.