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Khatami accepts invitation to visit Germany

TEHRAN, April 11 (AFP) - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami accepted an invitation from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Sunday to visit Germany, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Khatami, speaking to IRNA after a meeting here with visiting German Chancellery Minister Bodo Hombach, said the visit would take place at an "appropriate time."

"I am confident that a new stage has started in relations between Iran and Germany," Khatami added.

In Bonn, the German chancellery also confirmed the invitation and Khatami's acceptance.

The invitation to Khatami to visit Germany was delivered by Hombach, who arrived here on Saturday.

His arrival coincided with the release on bail of a German businessman, Helmut Hofer, who has been detained in a Tehran prison for 20 months for having an alleged illegal relationship with an Iranian Moslem woman.

The case has strained ties between the two countries, leading to a resumption of tensions after German justice officials in 1997 accused Tehran of masterminding political assassinations in Germany.

Last November, Schroeder appointed Hombach his personal envoy in the Hofer case. Tehran newspapers had speculated that the minister would leave the country with Hofer.

Instead, Hofer, 57, was released from a Tehran prison Saturday night on bail of 500 million rials (160,000 dollars), a spokesman for the judiciary, Fotowat Nassiri Savadkouhi, said.

Savadkouhi said that Hofer, who was detained in September 1997 and sentenced to death four months later, "will not be allowed to leave the country until his trial reopens."

Hofer's conviction was thrown out by the supreme court earlier this year for lack of evidence but a date for a new trial has not been set.

A German chancellery statement said Hombach "welcomed the release of Helmut Hofer, who now has freedom of movement within the country (Iran), and said he was convinced that the case was now headed in the right direction."

"A satisfactory solution will be beneficial to the development of good bilateral political, economic and cultural ties," the text read.

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