Iran claims West tried to poison Ahmadinejad through radiation in Rome

London, July 8 : Iran's Ambassador to Italy, Abolfazl Zohrehvand, has claimed that Western agents attempted to assassinate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad using radiation poisoning during a trip to Rome.

The official IRNA news agency quoted Zohrehvand as saying that the plot to take Ahmadinejad's life would have involved inflicting him with extreme radiation poisoning at the place where he stayed during the UN World Food Summit.

Explaining what he claimed was the latest plot, Zohrehvand said that the regular radiation level of X-ray machines was "300" millirems but on the machine at his Rome hotel it had reached "800".

According to The Times, the envoy claimed to have checked the X-ray machine set up in the place where he was staying, and found it giving off excessive radiation.

"First we suspected the machine was broken and after replacing it with another one it turned out that the radiation was controlled from another source. When the president entered this place, the radiation increased and exceeded '1,000' so that the intensity of the radiation was completely felt inside the building," the envoy was quoted, as saying.

The diplomat did not say if the place where Ahmadinejad was staying was a hotel or official residence.

ANI