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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: March 5, 2006 |
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FIFA will ignore calls for Iran to be expelled from of this summer's World Cup because of the controversy over its nuclear activities, a top official from world soccer's governing body said Sunday.
"FIFA has nothing to do with politics," said Emmanuel Maradas, a FIFA spokesman and special assistant to Sepp Blatter, the organization's president. "Iran is a FIFA member, they have qualified for the World Cup and they will be there to play football for the good of Iranian youth and for the good of peace."
The idea of expelling Iran from the tournament in Germany was raised by European and Israeli lawmakers after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the Nazi Holocaust as a "myth" and Iran resumed disputed nuclear activities.
Iran's national squad is scheduled to play its first match against Mexico in Nuremberg on June 11. The other teams in its qualifying Group D are Portugal and Angola.
Some critics have suggested the U.N. Security Council should act to ban the Iranian squad from the final tournament.
"The Security Council's decisions are not a concern of FIFA," Maradas said. "Iran will be welcome in Germany."
On Friday, Iran and the European Union were reported to be inching toward a compromise that would allow Tehran to run a scaled-down version of a uranium enrichment program. The development was significant because the Europeans and the United States have for years opposed allowing Iran any kind of enrichment capability with the potential for misuse to develop atomic weapons.
Maradas was in Jakarta at the head of a FIFA delegation taking the newly renovated World Cup trophy on a tour of 29 nations in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe.
Although soccer is Indonesia's most popular sport, it has not qualified for the World Cup finals since gaining independence after World War II. However, its national team qualified for the final tournament in France in 1938 under the name Dutch East Indies, and to this day remains the only squad from Southeast Asia to have participated in the competition. |
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