PARIS, June 6 (Reuter) - Officials of Iran and the European Union will discuss the EU's efforts to lift Iranian death threats against British author Salman Rushdie when they meet in Paris on June 22, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday. The Rushdie case has been a stumbling block in trade and other ties since Iran's revolutionary Islamic leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared in 1989 that the writer should be killed for committing blasphemy in his novel "The Satanic Verses".
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, in a statement that raised European hopes on the issue, told the BBC in a recent interview: "Our government is not going to dispatch anybody, any commandos, to kill anybody in Europe.
"This is our determination to expand our relations with Europe. This is a new chance for us," Velayati said.
The French spokesman said the Paris meeting would be held at vice-minister or senior bureaucrat level. "A meeting is expected on June 22...and the Rushdie matter is on the agenda," he said.
The EU has offered better trade and political links with Iran if Tehran would guarantee that Rushdie would be safe within Europe's borders. The novelist has been in hiding since Ayatollah Khomeini's pronouncement.
The Paris talks are part of a series of regular meetings, which cover a broad range of EU-Iran issues.
