UK's May to meet Iran's Rouhani

LONDON (Reuters) : British Prime Minister Theresa May held a bilateral meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday (September 25), during which she reportedly intended to lobby for detained British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

A senior British official said that the meeting with Rouhani would discuss consular cases, including that of Zaghari-Ratcliffe who has been sentenced to five years in jail in Iran.

Britain is seeking the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation who was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she headed back to Britain with her daughter after a family visit.

She was convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran’s clerical establishment, a charge denied by her family and the Foundation, a charity organisation that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and Reuters News.

May held separate meetings with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.