Argentine lawyer accuses Iran ex-leader in bombing

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, Oct 25 (Reuters) An Argentine prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people accused Iran of planning the attack and sought the arrest of a former Iranian president today, along with seven former government officials.

Argentine authorities have repeatedly accused Iran of involvement in the attack, but this is the first time a former president could face questioning. Iran has always denied any role in the bombing.

The judge overseeing the investigation must now decide whether to order international arrest warrants.

''We have proven that the decision to attack the AMIA headquarters on July 18, 1994 ... was a decision made by the highest authorities in Iran's government at the time,'' prosecutor Alberto Nisman told a press conference.

Nisman said the former Iranian officials ordered Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas to carry out the attack during a 1993 meeting in the Iranian city of Mashhad. He also implicated ex-President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who held office from 1989 to 1997.

No one has been convicted for blowing up the AMIA center in Buenos Aires, in part because judges determined in 2004 that a long investigation into the bombing had been botched. But they ordered the probe continue.

The judge in charge of the case previously had sought the international arrest of 12 Iranian citizens, three of whom the current prosecutor is trying again to have arrested.

No one has yet been extradited to Argentina in connection with the case.

The attack on the AMIA center came two years after a bomb destroyed Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people, in another case that Argentine courts never resolved.

Argentina is home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America.

In court documents, the prosecutor linked the AMIA attack to Argentina's decision to stop providing Iran with nuclear technology and materials.

But former Argentine President Carlos Menem, who governed from 1989 to 1999, said he believed both attacks could have been a response to Buenos Aires' decision to back the United States in the first Gulf War and to his own state visit to Israel.

Reuters DKS VP0330