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PARIS (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has suggested that France should consider
a prisoner swap if it wants to secure the release of a French teaching assistant charged with spying in Tehran.

Clotilde Reiss is on bail and staying in the French embassy in the Iranian capital pending a verdict in a mass trial where she has been accused of aiding an alleged Western plot following Iran's disputed presidential election in June.

In an interview with France 2 television aired Tuesday, Ahmadinejad refused to be drawn on whether he would help Reiss, but said pointedly that Iranians were also being held in France.

"Do you know that there are some Iranians who have been in prison in France for years?" he said, speaking through a translator.