TEHRAN • Iran's ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has aroused controversy after saying in a new book that revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini favoured dropping the mantra of "Death to America."

The revelation in the latest edition of Rafsanjani's diaries comes amid growing strains between Tehran and Washington, but also after landmark talks between Iranian and US officials on security in Iraq.

The slogan of "Death to America" symbolises Iran's enmity with the United States and is chanted by the faithful after Friday prayers and often during speeches by the Islamic republic's top leaders.

Rafsanjani's comment comes in an entry from July 5, 1984, five years before Khomeini's death and in the midst of the 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq which cost a million lives on both sides.

"Mr Imam Moussavi, an MP from Shoushtar, also came to visit me and he suggested banning the slogans of 'Death to America' and 'Death to the Soviet Union'," writes Rafsanjani, who was speaker of parliament at that time.

"I told him that in principle a decision had been taken and the imam (Khomeini) has approved it.

"But we are waiting for the right moment." The newly published book is the fifth volume in a series of memoirs by Rafsanjani detailing his life story, from political activism under the shah to his work as a top Iranian leader.

The book was published before the new Iranian year in March and the comments have been unnoticed until now.

But they have been picked up in the local media in recent days, with hardliners condemning Rafsanjani for publishing what they see as a distortion of Khomeini's views.

The hardline daily Kayhan's editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari on Saturday wrote a stinging editorial calling on Rafsanjani to retract the statement.

"It must be said that what Rafsanjani attributed to the imam (Khomeini) is contrary to the positions announced by the late imam and his path which is known to everyone," he said.

"More than hurting the nation, this hurts the personality of Rafsanjani. It is definitely necessary that this be corrected," wrote Shariatmadari in the editorial entitled "Pardon me, Mr Rafsanjani..."

Always at the centre of the Islamic republic's politics, Rafsanjani served two terms as president between 1989-1997. However he was humiliatingly thrashed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential vote.