Iranian government jet lands at G7 summit town in France

An Iranian government jet landed on Sunday in Biarritz, southwestern France, where leaders of the G7 group of nations are meeting, the flight tracking website flightradar24.com showed.

Biarritz's airport has been closed for the duration of the summit from Saturday to Monday.

The same plane took Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to Oslo and Paris last week, the site showed.

European leaders have struggled to calm a deepening confrontation between Iran and the United States since U.S. President Donald Trump pulled his country out of Iran's internationally brokered 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions on the Iranian economy.

Earlier on Sunday at the G7 summit, Trump appeared to brush aside French efforts to mediate with Iran, saying that while he was happy for Paris to reach out to Tehran to defuse tensions he would carry on with his own initiatives.

France said G7 leaders had agreed that Macron should hold talks and pass on messages to Iran. However, Trump, who has pushed a maximum pressure policy on Iran, distanced himself from the proposal, saying he had not even discussed it.