Paper issues apology over false Iran story

TORONTO — A Canadian newspaper apologized Wednesday for publishing an erroneous story last week claiming that an Iranian law would require Jews and Christians to wear badges identifying them as religious minorities.

The National Post article Friday caused an international uproar. Iran on Wednesday summoned Canada's ambassador to its foreign ministry.

Iran's conservative parliament last week began debating a draft law that would discourage women from wearing Western clothing and encourage citizens to wear Islamic-style garments.

The Post erroneously said the bill included provisions requiring Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims to wear a patch of colored cloth on the front of their garments.

That incorrect description appeared to many as a chilling throwback to Nazi Germany when Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David.

Iranian officials labeled the newspaper account a lie and a copy of the bill, obtained by The Associated Press in Tehran on Saturday, made no mention of requiring special attire for religious minorities.

Douglas Kelly, editor-in-chief of the National Post, ran a column on page 2 Wednesday explaining the story was based on a column by Amir Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, and two expatriates Iranians living in Canada.

U.S. accused of "hatching plots"

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the United States and its allies on Wednesday of "hatching plots" to provoke ethnic tensions and destabilize Iran, a day after the government closed a state-run newspaper for publishing a cartoon that sparked riots by an ethnic minority.

Iran closed the state-run Farsi language newspaper Iran and detained its chief editor and cartoonist on Tuesday for publishing a cartoon that showed a cockroach speaking Azeri and suggested that ethnic Azeris are stupid.

"Today, they [the U.S. and its allies] are hatching plots. They want to provoke differences, divisions, disappointment ... to prevent the Iranian nation from achieving all of its rights," Ahmadinejad told thousands of people in Khorramshahr in southwestern Iran.

Hundreds of Azeris marched Monday in the northwestern city of Tabriz to protest the cartoon. Some broke windows at the governor's office, and police had to use tear gas to disperse the crowd, witnesses said.

Azeris, a Turkic ethnic group, are Iran's largest minority, making up a quarter of Iran's 70 million people, dominated by ethnic Persians. Azeris speak a Turkic language shared by their brethren in neighboring Azerbaijan.