Sat Oct 11
By Christian Oliver
Iran's first Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, has exposed the battlelines between the nation's conservatives and reformists who exchanged fire in Saturday's newspapers.
Iran's conservatives accused the Nobel committee of pandering to the West's political agenda by awarding its Peace Prize to Ebadi. Ranged against them, reformists hailed her as a catalyst for change.
Ebadi, 56, is a thorn in the side of hard-liners and a vocal campaigner on women's rights who has taken on the defense of political activists -- cases others feared to touch.
While conservative-controlled state-run television and radio were still agonizing over how to broadcast the news, Iranian girls had seen Friday's award on U.S. satellite stations and were excitedly ringing each other and sending text messages.
President Mohammad Khatami's reformist government congratulated Ebadi.
Assadollah Badamchian, who heads the political branch of the conservative Coalition Party, was skeptical about the Nobel committee's motives.
"It is natural that somebody who calls herself a reformist and is supported by Powell, Blair and Bush receives this prize," he was quoted as saying in Saturday's newspapers.
Ali Yousefpour, president of the Muslim Journalists' Association said Ebadi's award echoed the prize given to Egypt's Anwar Sadat, loathed by hard-liners who accuse him of selling out to arch-foe Israel and sheltering the exiled shah.
"This award has been given those who work in the line of Western interests or against Islam," he was quoted as saying.
NO MENTION<> Though the reformist press splashed Ebadi's gentle smile across the front pages, conservative newspapers such as Resalat, one of whose editors dismissed the award as political, made no mention of her victory.
Other hardline periodicals tucked a few dismissive column inches in the back pages and the conservative Jomhuri-ye Eslami even confused her with another woman lawyer.
However, Ali Moazami, a columnist in the reformist daily Sharq, said the award would offer wind to the sails of the reform movement.
"It is an encouragement for those who want freedom to raise their voices," he wrote. "Everyone seemed to interpret it as a sign of cries being heard."
Another journalist who declined to be named hailed the decision as a message to Iran's reformists that they were not alone.
"I was so happy for Iran when I heard this news," he told Reuters. "This is the best signal for the opposition and the students." Students have often been at the forefront of pro-democracy protest in Iran.
The reformist-controlled official IRNA news agency carried a piece saying: "The award Iran received on Friday was one of the sweetest prizes in the history of the land." The phrase played with Ebadi's first name Shirin which is Persian for sweet. (Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Parinoosh Arami)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=721&e=3&u=/nm/20031011/wl_nm/iran_nobel_reaction_dc
Iranian girls had seen Friday's award on U.S. satellite stations and were excitedly ringing each other and sending text messages.
Let freedom ring!
Sat October 11, 2003
SIDON, Lebanon (Reuters) - Iran's ambassador to Lebanon said on Saturday Tehran had no information on a missing Israeli airman whose fate is overshadowing prisoner exchange talks between Israel and Lebanon's Hizbollah. Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hizbollah has been negotiating with Israel through German mediators for several months on exchange of four Israeli captives for some 15 Lebanese, dozens of Arabs and hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails.
Hizbollah said on Friday a deal could be concluded soon, but the fate of an Israeli airforce navigator, Ron Arad, shot down over Lebanon in 1986, has cast a shadow over the talks.
Hizbollah denies knowledge of Arad's whereabouts, but Israel believes he is being held in Iran.
"The Israeli enemy is accustomed always to making such false accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran," Massoud Idrissi said. "We have denied this report and said that we do not have any information on the fate of the airman Arad," he told reporters during a visit to the southern port city of Sidon.
Several Israeli officials, media and pressure groups have said any prisoner swap deal should include Arad.
At the top of Hizbollah's list of detainees it wants freed are Hizbollah official Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid and guerrilla commander Mustafa al-Dirani, whose group first captured Arad.
Israel, which pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon in 2000 under pressure from Hizbollah, kidnapped Obeid and Dirani from their homes over a decade ago as bargaining chips for information on Arad.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=RDNAXJT5M5TJ4CRBAEKSFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=3597374