Putin due in Iran despite threat

Tehran/Wiesbaden, Germany: Russian President Vladimir Putin will arrive in Tehran this morning, the office of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.

"Russian President Vlad-imir Putin will arrive in Tehran, heading a delegation, tomorrow morning after leaving Germany," the Iranian presidential office said on its web site.

The Kremlin declined to comment on when the president would arrive. Putin is attending a summit of leaders from the five Caspian Sea states in the Iranian capital today.

In Wiesbaden, Putin said he will visit Iran to discuss its nuclear programme despite a reported assassination plot against him.

"Of course I am going to Iran," Putin told a news conference after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "If you react to various threats and recommendations of the security services, then you should sit at home".

Kremlin officials had earlier said plans for Putin's visit were in doubt after a Russian news agency reported, quoting a single unnamed security source, that plotters were planning to assassinate Putin in Tehran.

In a historical coincidence, reports of an assassination plot also hung over Josef Stalin's 1943 visit to Tehran to meet allies Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On that occasion, Stalin said Soviet intelligence had uncovered Nazi plans to kill Roosevelt, persuading the American president to move into the Soviet embassy for his stay.

Putin's trip to Tehran was being watched by Western capitals which fear Iran is seeking an atomic bomb. Iran denies A-bomb ambitions and is building a nuclear reactor with Russian help.