Iran on Sunday shunned a major conference in Paris at which top envoys from Afghanistan, its neighbours and the world's great powers met to map out the war-torn state's future. Tehran had promised to send its Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, French officials said, but in the end he failed to make the trip and even the Iranian ambassador failed to show up, a diplomatic source said. French-Iranian relations were strained this week after the foreign ministry in Tehran summoned the French ambassador to express the Islamic republic's "strong objections to the recent interfering comments by the French president."