I would like to visit, Khatami tells Israeli journalist in Davos

Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami told an Israeli journalist at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week that he would like to visit Israel, a country whose destruction has been repeatedly called for by Mr Khatami's successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The conversation with Sever Plotsker, senior economic editor of Yediot Ahronoth, took place after Mr Khatami told the forum that he hoped calm heads would reduce tensions between his country and the US.

When Plotsker introduced himself as an Israeli journalist, Mr Khatami shook his hand and said, 'I want to visit your country.'

Israel, as it happens, is the one country listed on Iranian passports as forbidden to visit.

Mr Khatami's remark, coming a month after he invited an Israeli student he encountered in Scotland to visit Iran, reflects a markedly different attitude towards the Jewish state than that of Mr Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'.

In their conversation, wrote Plotsker, Mr Khatami jovially made reference to Israel's embattled president, Moshe Katzav, who was born two years after him in the same Iranian city, Yazd. 'Tell me, please, what are you doing over there to my townsman? What are you doing to Moshe, Moshe Katzav?' The two men have never met, but Iranians are well aware that Israel's president was born in their country and left for Israel at age five.

'Seriously though,' said Mr Khatami, 'I don't want to intervene in what's happening. You must know what you're doing if this is your attitude towards him.'