Iran Cabinet Delays Election Crisis Talks
January 31, 2004
The Associated Press
ABC News
TEHRAN, Iran -- President Mohammad Khatami was admitted to the hospital Saturday with severe back pain, forcing the postponement of an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss the crisis over parliamentary elections, his office told The Associated Press.
Earlier Saturday, Khatami indicated that his government could not proceed with the Feb. 20 vote under conditions imposed by the hard-line Guardian Council, which disqualified more than 2,000 reformist candidates from the ballot.
"My government will only hold competitive and free elections ... the parliament must represent the views of the majority and include all (political) tendencies," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Khatami as saying.
The deepening conflict over the election Iran's worse political crisis in years came as the Islamic nation marked the 25th anniversary of the revolution that swept to power the anti-American, hard-line clerics who rule alongside the government.
After disqualifying more than 3,600 of the 8,200 people who filed papers to stand for election, the clerics of the Guardian Council softened their position Friday by reinstating 1,160 candidates.
But more than 2,400 prominent reformist politicians and party leaders including 80 sitting lawmakers remained barred, and Friday, by law, was the last day for any more changes.
Reformists called Friday's action cosmetic and threatened to boycott the election. They accuse the clerics of trying to sway the vote to regain control of the 290-seat parliament, which the conservatives lost four years ago for the first time since the 1979 revolution.
On Saturday, Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari reiterated the reformists' view of the vote as undemocratic.
"There is no possibility of competitive, free and fair elections," IRNA quoted Lari as saying. "We don't consider this election as legitimate."
Lari had urged the clerics to postpone the vote, but the Guardian Council rejected that Friday. While the interior ministry organizes elections, the 12-member, unelected council has an overriding, supervisory power.
Khatami spoke after he and his Cabinet visited the mausoleum of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of the Islamic revolution that toppled U.S. ally Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as part of anniversary commemorations.
He had called a special Cabinet meeting for later Saturday, but that was canceled because of his back problem and hospitalization, a senior official in Khatami's office said. "The president has had back problems for a long time," the official told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Khatami, whose program of greater democracy and a relaxation of the Islamic social code has been thwarted by hard-liners, could be left with two options.
He could refuse to hold elections, which would leave voting in the hands of hard-liners most likely relying on the elite Revolutionary Guards and supporting military forces to organize the polls.
Or, he could challenge the Guardian Council and instruct the Interior Ministry to include all disqualified candidates in the ballots. The council claims the barred candidates lacked the criteria to stand for office even those already in parliament.
Most members of the council are hand-picked by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say over its actions.
Saeed Shariati, a leader of Iran's biggest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, said his party would announce Monday whether it would boycott the vote.
"The council statement means there is no option left for us but to boycott this sham election ... as Iran's biggest party, almost all our candidates have been barred," Shariati said Friday.
The front's leader, Mohammad Reza Khatami, is the president's brother, a deputy speaker of parliament and one of the disqualified candidates.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040131_743.htmlI heard a rumor. I don't quite know what to make of it, but I can see several possibilities that even if the US cuts a deal, there is someone or something else waiting in the wings.
The scuttlebut is that Iran's Mullahs are offering up Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri in return for the US backing off of badmouthing the mullahs or helping the students. Don't know if it's true. It came from Monsoor Ijaz.
Has anyone heard anything like this???