A German arms dealer told Italian anti-Mafia officers on April 6, 2006 that he had supplied Ahmadinejad with weapons in Vienna, shortly before Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou's assassination, according to the statement.

Ghassemlou, the leader of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan -- an Iranian opposition party outlawed by Tehran -- was killed on July 13, 1989 by commandos who were never apprehended.

Iran however has always denied any involvement in the killings.

In the testimony, presented to the press Thursday by the Green party spokesman on security Peter Pilz, the German said he was in constant contact with Iranian intelligence services in 1989 regarding arms deals.

Shortly before the killing, he also delivered half a dozen light weapons to a meeting at the Iranian embassy in Vienna, in which Ahmadinejad took part.

"The third meeting took place at the Iranian embassy in the first week of July 1989," said the German arms dealer, according to a copy of the testimony presented by Pilz.

At this meeting were three Iranians, including "a certain Mohamed, who later became president of the Republic of Iran," he added.

This Mohamed "appeared to me to be a weapons expert (and) was very interested, indeed excited, almost enthralled by the weapons," he also said.

The German gave this statement in the presence of Austrian police officers while serving a sentence for arms trafficking in Trieste, Italy. His testimony was then passed on to the Austrian authorities, according to Pilz.

"This document fully supports the serious suspicion that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supplied the weapons that were used in the killings," the Green deputy added.

The Vienna prosecutor's office confirmed that it had the German's statement in its possession.

"We have had this testimony for a while and we have studied it," a spokeswoman, Michaela Schnell, told AFP.

"But it was not deemed sufficient to justify suspicions," she added.

In July 2005, Pilz already presented the testimony of an unnamed Iranian journalist who said he had a detailed account of Ghassemlou's assassination from one of the supposed members of the hit-squad -- Revolutionary Guard General Nasser Taghipour -- who died in 2002.

In it, Taghipour apparently implicated Ahmadinejad.

Former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr, exiled near Paris, also said he had met the journalist with Pilz and received a written account in Farsi of the affair.

But Austrian police were never allowed by the French authorities to hear the witness, according to Pilz.

The Austrian authorities, who maintain close economic ties with Iran, have never confirmed or denied whether Iran's current president was in Vienna at the time of Ghassemlou's assassination.