Putin's Iran trip

Will he or won't he? With a credible threat of assassination, as it stands, the wires are uncertain as to whether President Putin will arrive in Tehran today.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A Kremlin spokesman said Monday he couldn't confirm Russian President Vladimir Putin's plan to arrive in Iran later Monday as scheduled.

"There is no information that the visit is still planned," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told The Associated Press. He refused to elaborate, but the comments follow a Russian special services warning of a possible attempt to assassinate Putin during his visit.

Russia's Interfax news agency, citing a source in Russia's special services, said Sunday that suicide terrorists had been trained to carry out the assassination.

A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, denied any such plot had been uncovered, characterizing the news as disinformation spread by Iran's adversaries.

"These sort of reports are completely baseless and in direction with psychological operations of enemies of relations between Iran and Russia," Hosseini said in a statement.

Putin was expected to travel to Tehran on Monday night from Germany after meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

During his visit to Iran, Putin was to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and attend Tuesday's summit of Caspian Sea nations.

He will be the first Kremlin leader to travel to Iran since Josef Stalin attended a 1943 wartime summit with Britain's Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt.

Officials have reported uncovering at least two other plots to kill Putin on foreign trips since he became president in 2000.

Ukrainian security officials said they foiled an attempt to kill Putin during a summit in Yalta in August 2000. And in 2001, Russian security officials said a plot to assassinate Putin earlier that year in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, had been uncovered by the Azeri special services.

Russian officials linked both alleged plots to Chechen separatists. Putin had sent troops back into the southern Russian republic to crush resistance to Moscow's rule.

Putin's trip to Iran, if it goes ahead as planned, will be closely watched by U.S. officials, who accuse Iran of trying to produce nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.

Russia has resisted the U.S. push for stronger sanctions against Tehran and strongly warned Washington against using force in its standoff over its nuclear program.