Iran says cannot confirm arrest of three Americans

          
          Iran says oanmt coiffirm arrest of three An' ricaris Rei lers ,com littp://www.reuters.com /arficlePrint?articleld—IJSTRE573 1Z520090805
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          Iran says cannot confirm arrest of three
          Americans
          Wed Aug 5, 2009 6:12am EDT
          TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on
          Wednesday he could not confirm Whether three Americans had been
          detained by Iran.
          “There have been contradictory and vague reports on their arrest in Iran. I
          cannot confirm or deny the arrests until further investigation,” Hassan
          Qashqavi told state radio.
          On Tuesday, a local security official in Iran's Western Kurdistan province,
          lraj Hassanzadeh, told state-run al-Alam television that three Americans had
          been detained there.
          “They are definitely Americans,” he said. “They were detained four days
          ago. We don't know Whether they are tourists or not. We are questioning
          them.”
          A senior security official in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region said on
          Saturday that three tourists had strayed across northern Iraq's border with
          Iran near Ahmed Awa and been detained.
          The same day a source told al Jam, Iran's Arabic-language television
          channel, that the three, believed to be two men and a woman, had been
          arrested after entering Iran.
          The party had arrived in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya on Wednesday.
          There is no clear border demarcation between Iran and Iraq at Ahmed Awa.
          (Wrfting by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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