Japanese correspondent kicked out of Teheran

Iranian authorities expelled a Japanese reporter from Tehran, the Japanese news service Kyodo said. Kunihiko Suzuki is the first Japanese journalist ordered by Iran's fundamentalist rulers to leave the country.

The Iranian government ordered the closure of the Kyodo bureau in Tehran ''on the grounds that Kyodo had falsely reported Iranian requests for emergency loans from Japanese and West European banks,'' Kyodo reported.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian authorities have ordered the closing of the Tehran bureaus of major Western news agencies for alleged distortion of news. The only major international news organization operating in Iran is the French news agency, Agence France-Presse.