Iranian Alert -- November 8, 2003 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD PING LIST

The US media almost entirely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” But most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East.

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. Starting June 10th of this year, Iranians have begun taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy. Many even want the US to over throw their government.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

PS I have a daily ping list and a breaking news ping list. If you would like to receive alerts to these stories please let me know which list you would like to join.

Bush's Middle East shift

BBC World Service - By Roger Hardy
Nov 7, 2003

In a major foreign policy speech in Washington, US President George W Bush has challenged the countries of the Middle East to adopt democracy.

By advocating the spread of democracy to the Muslim Middle East, President Bush is embracing one of the big ideas of the "neo-conservatives" - the radical Republicans whose influence has grown so markedly since he entered the White House.

For the neo-conservatives, the end of the Cold War should have marked the opening of the floodgates of democracy all over the world.

Critics are sceptical that the US has staying power
But some areas, the Middle East notable among them, remained stubbornly resistant to the trend.

The neo-conservatives believe successive American presidents, essentially because of their need for oil, allowed the region's rulers to stick to their old authoritarian ways.

The folly of this, they argue, was dramatically exposed by the attacks of 11 September 2001. And, crucially, those attacks gave the neo-conservatives a unique opportunity to put things right, as they see them.

Radical departure

In his speech in Washington, President Bush was blunt in castigating what he (and the neo-conservatives) regard as the mistakes of the past.

"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty," he declared.

If Mr Bush is as good as his word, it will mark a radical departure from the traditional realpolitik of American foreign policy.

But will he follow through? Already commentators around the world are pointing to the most obvious difficulties.

How to convince Middle Easterners you are serious about human rights and democracy when, in Arab and Muslim eyes, a whole people - the Palestinians - are being denied their rights?

How to be consistent and avoid the inevitable charge of double standards? Will Washington be indulgent, say, to the military-backed government in Algeria - whose human-rights abuses are well documented - because that government can be useful in the "war on terror"?

Will the US put equal pressure on allies and enemies? Though Mr Bush said two allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, had to do more, will he end up treating them with kid gloves, while reserving the bludgeon for Iran and Syria?

If elections brought to power anti-US governments, would the US administration change its mind?
There is much scepticism about whether Mr Bush's goal is achievable and whether the administration, or for that matter the American people, have the staying power necessary for success.

But at the same time what is clear to anyone who visits the Middle East is that there is a huge pent-up demand for greater freedom.

For all their mistrust of the United States, many in the region will be hoping that, if there is sustained American pressure, their rulers will at last get serious about reform.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3250779.stm

In Iran, powerlessness feeds on itself

International Herald Tribune - By A. William Samii
Nov 8, 2003

PRAGUE - Iran's next parliamentary election is scheduled to take place in February, but the reformists who swept into office almost four years ago have already lost. While they deal with powerlessness, political infighting and a lack of credibility, their conservative rivals are busy manipulating the system and working their considerable powers to ensure that they can hang on. The only practical hope for a more moderate regime in Iran is in the election process, but public recognition of the reformists' weaknesses is all too likely to keep voters at home on Election Day, despairing that their votes can do anything to change their lives.

A year has passed since President Mohammad Khatami's administration introduced legislation, called the twin bills, to increase the power of the elected president and Parliament.

One of the bills would eliminate the unelected National Security Council's power to reject candidates for elected office and overturn election results. The other would give the president power to reverse some decisions of the judiciary to close independent newspapers, imprison journalists and attempt to imprison parliamentarians. Both the council and the judiciary are made up of appointees of the supreme religious leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or other leaders close to him, and they are part of the structure of unelected institutions that really runs Iran.

Because the National Security Council has powers over all legislation, it might seem quixotic to introduce legislation that would reduce its powers. And indeed, the council has rejected both bills and negotiations have failed to produce a compromise. President Khatami conceded in a September speech to provincial governors, "We must assume that the new election law will not be ratified or will be rejected." Meanwhile the security council is creating permanent supervisory offices to prepare dossiers on prospective candidates. Iran's reformists are also divided among themselves. Some parliamentarians have threatened to resign over frustrations with their powerlessness. Some are seen as opportunists jockeying for power. Some reformist groups have met with conservative elements about possible coalitions. This overall situation - the legislative impasse, the institutional conflicts, the political jockeying - is frustrating for the public as well as the politicians, and that frustration is likely to keep voters home from the polls in 2004. Turnout in the most recent election, a vote last February for municipal councils, was just 28 percent, compared with 69 percent in the 2000 parliamentary election. The protests and demonstrations of the last year are another indication of a lack of confidence in the electoral system - people who can express themselves through the vote do not need to resort to the street.

If the Iranian political system is set up so that unelected officials can overrule elected ones, does it really matter if Iranians vote? It matters to the regime. The ruling forces bus voters to polling places, encourage the participation of public employees and consistently extend the polling hours. The government stakes some of its legitimacy on holding regular and well-attended elections.
It should matter to outside observers, too. The political system heavily favors entrenched conservative forces, but it is flexible, and short of a full-scale military invasion, elections are the only hope for replacing an Iranian leadership that is hostile to the United States and its allies, pursues an adventurist foreign policy in its region and is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. .

The writer is the senior regional analyst for Southwest Asia at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and prepares the weekly "RFE/RL Iran Report" (www.rferl.org/iran-report).

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_3436.shtml

Freedom sweet for a fortunate father

Age - By Penelope Debelle
Nov 8, 2003

Out of the blue on Thursday, with less than an hour to spare, Ebrahim Sammaki was told to shower, change and collect his possessions. Two-and-a-half years after arriving at the Woomera detention centre, and more than a year after losing his wife, Endang, in the Bali bombings, the wheels of freedom moved swiftly.

He was on a charter flight from Port Augusta to Adelaide on Thursday afternoon, cleared by immigration at 5pm and dined in Adelaide late that night with friends and supporters on a halal chicken and yiros.

"I just started crying and crying," Mr Sammaki said yesterday. "A permanent visa..."

Mr Sammaki, 36, an Australian courtesy of Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone, who released him on a humanitarian visa, glowed yesterday at the prospect of being reunited soon with his Indonesian-born children, Safdar, 8, and Sara, 4, who was just a baby when he left. He has not seen them for more than two years and was finding it hard to communicate with them in their Indonesian dialect.

Mr Sammaki's path to Australia has been more complex than most. Nine years ago he left Iran and lived illegally in Indonesia for seven years where he married Endang and had two children. But a year after he arrived in Australia to seek asylum, she died of burns incurred in the Bali bombing, leaving their children stranded in Indonesia without citizenship. Former immigration minister Phillip Ruddock refused to let them come here.

Yesterday, Mr Sammaki had no comment about Senator Vanstone's act of compassion. He preferred to talk about his children whom he spoke to in Bali, telling them this time they really would be seeing him soon.

"I have already told them more than 100 times, 'sweetie, it may be tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next week... now I am proud because I am not any more lying to them," he said yesterday.

"Now they will come as soon as possible."

He left the Baxter detention centre at Port Augusta so quickly he had no time to farewell his friends, he said.

But he will take his children to visit Baxter, he says, and will fight for his friends' release as others fought for his.

"I feel very bad," he said. "Now is a very good time but I will never forget them, wherever I am."

He has been told it will be a few weeks before he will see his children and is counting off the hours and minutes. The paperwork was in place but passports and travel documents were being arranged by the Red Cross.

Mr Sammaki said he would stay in Adelaide, where he was among friends, and look for work.

He was a textile and fabric merchant by trade and would look for a job as soon he could, even though he still felt in a dream.

"Everyone is dreaming to be a resident of this country," he said. "My children will be good for this country, they will be positive for this country."

Inside Woomera and Baxter, Mr Sammaki said he occasionally despaired but said he never gave up hope. "I always had hope, never give up," he said.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_3435.shtml

Asefi condemns Bush's recent comments on Iran

Saturday, November 08, 2003 - ©2003 IranMania.com

Tehran, Nov 7, IRNA -- Iran condemned the recent remarks made by the US President George W. Bush, labeling them as "Obvious interference in Iran's internal affairs".

The spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Hamid-Reza Asefi in a communique, a copy of which was faxed to IRNA, added, "Such adventurism is in direct contrast with the United States' commitments, stated in the text of the Algeria Declaration and proves that the US is not respecting its own international commitments."

Elsewhere in the communique, Asefi says, "No individual, or group, has ever commissioned Mr. Bush to safeguard their rights, nor is he responsible for supporting anyone here, and basically, keeping in mind the dark record of the United States in suppressing the democratic movements around the globe, he is not in a position to talk about such issues."

The communique ends advising the US President to heed the mounting disapproval of the American public opinion regarding the war launched against the Iraqi people, respect their righteous demand, and not contribute to further destabilization and insecurity in the region.

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=19457&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

Sharon's duplicity

World Net Daily
November 8, 2003

Israeli Prime Minister Sharon went on a mission this week to Russia and to the European Union. He urged them to support the imposition of U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran – for "violations" of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Sharon also urged them to withdraw a proposed Security Council resolution that could result in sanctions being imposed on Israel – for failure to withdraw its troops from Palestinian Authority-controlled areas.

Why should sanctions be imposed on Iran?

Well, for years Israel and the United States have claimed that Iran has a clandestine nuke development program.

Iran denies it.

Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Hence, Iran is required to "declare" to the International Atomic Energy Agency all 1) nuclear material; 2) nuclear reactors and equipment therefor; 3) non-nuclear material for reactors; 4) plant and equipment for the reprocessing, enrichment and conversion of nuclear material and for fuel fabrication and heavy water production; and 5) technology associated with each of the above items. Iran has a right to acquire, produce and operate all the above, if subjected to an IAEA Safeguards Agreement. Though not required to do so, Iran invited the IAEA to come assure themselves that Iran had declared everything it should have, and that the charges by the U.S. and Israel were unfounded.

The principal "violation" the IAEA uncovered was that Iran had obtained, way back in 1991, almost two metric tons of natural uranium and had not "declared" it.

The Iranians contend that the amounts were small – well below the IAEA threshold of "one effective kilogram" of fissile material – and didn't need to be declared.

After all, even if the Iranians did have the a capability – which the IAEA says they don't – to enrich two tons of natural uranium, they couldn't have produced more than two pounds of weapons-grade uranium from it. It takes at least 60 times that amount to make one Hiroshima-like nuke.

But, the IAEA ruled that, whereas amounts larger than "one effective kilogram" of fissile material are subject to more stringent controls and reporting requirements, all amounts have to be reported.

The Israelis and the neo-crazies were ecstatic. Iran was not in complete compliance with its Safeguards Agreement.

So, bomb Baghdad!

No, wait. That was last year.

Well, why not urge the IAEA Board of Governors to refer the less-than-complete-compliance "violation" to the U.N. Security Council.

The board refused.

So, Sharon went around the IAEA to Russia and the EU. His message? Either the Security Council passes a resolution invoking sanctions on Iran, or Israel and the U.S. will put Iran – the "center of world terror" – at the top of the "to do" list.

But even British Foreign Secretary Straw, when he heard what Sharon was urging, said "it would be the gravest possible error" to do unto Iran what we did to Iraq.

Quoth Jack – "I think that the way to ensure proper progress with Iran is not by that kind of hostile threat, but by the process and strategy of constructed and critical engagement that we [EU] are involved in."

For if Iran concludes an Additional Protocol to their existing Safeguards Agreement – giving the IAEA the right to inspect without warning any suspicious activity in Iran – then the EU has agreed to provide everything that Iran is entitled to under the terms of the NPT. In particular, Russia intends to finish construction of the power reactors at Bushehr.

President Putin even made a counter-threat: "If the principle of preventive use of force continues to develop in international practice, then Russia reserves the right to act in an analogous manner to defend its national interests."

That could be construed as a warning to Sharon – don't even think of "taking out" Bushehr.

So Sharon failed in his primary mission. But, what about his secondary mission?

Russia and the EU – with U.S. approval – had also introduced a resolution at the United Nations last week asking the Security Council to formally "call" for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Sharon urged Putin to withdraw it.

Why?

Such a resolution would effectively put the Security Council "in charge" of that establishment, and that could be big trouble for Sharon.

You see, there is an existing resolution – UNSCR-1403 – that "demands" that Israel withdraw all its troops from Palestinian cities.

So, is Sharon busting his donkey to comply with that existing resolution? Are you serious?

So, did Putin agree to withdraw his proposed resolution? Are you serious?

-------
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35489

Jails open to media eyes: Prosecuter

IRIB English News
2003/11/08

Tehran, Nov 8 - Tehran's Public Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi said Thursday Iranian and foreign journalists can visit freely Iranian jails and conduct investigations on the situation of the prisoners.

The doors of the jails remain open to journalists, whether Iranian or foreign ones, to come and see inside the prisons and the circumstances where the detained live and to get acquainted with the realities, Mortazavi said while speaking in ceremony to inaugurate the special tribunal for juvenile delinquencies.

He referred to his November 5 meeting with UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression Ambeyi Ligabo and said the UN official has asked to allow him to visit prisoners and he had let him visit the jail because the situation in prisoners matches the international standards.

He said he and Ligabo discussed the legal proceedings in the Islamic Republic during a two-hour meeting where he explained the functions and performance of Iran's judicial apparatus and the proceedings of the press offenses.

Mortazavi said as he had mentioned in the meeting with Ligabo the limits of the freedom are determined even in the declaration on the human rights but added that there was not unrestricted freedoms in this document.

On November 5, Mortazavi responded to all the questions raised by the UN rapporteur on the legal proceedings and judicial affairs in Iran.

The primary investigations on the suspects, Mortazavi said, are often conducted by the magistrates and the prosecutors deal with the file cases independently.

In the press courts, every file case is viewed and examined by at least two judges, he said adding that the press offenses are being handed in the penal courts and the court sessions are normally attended by a jury of three judges.

He said the trial of the managing directors and license holders of periodicals and newspapers is conducted very carefully as the laws on the press offenses have been reformed by the judiciary.

Court procedures held for the press circles are like those for the suspected high-level officials including ministers, presidential advisors and governors, he explained.

http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=191934&n=14

"Unemployment rate stands at 11.4%": Iran's Central Bank

November 08, 2003 - ©2003 IranMania

TEHRAN, Nov. 8, IRANMANIA -- The head of Iran’s Central Bank, Ibrahim Sheybani estimated the rate of unemployment in Iran as around 11.4% saying that policies on the creation of more job opportunities will be pursued more seriously.

He considered the country’s economic growth rate as “extraordinary” saying: “The country experienced a 7.4% economic growth last year which is 5 times greater than those of the Persian Gulf states.”

Sheybani described the volume of the country’s foreign exchange reserves at the end of the last year as satisfactory stating: “In 1381 (Iranian calendar year for March 2002 / March 2003), the country’s foreign exchange reserves increased more than 5 billion dollars while foreign debts significantly decreased.”

Referring to the fulfillment of the predictions made in the field of oil export revenues, Sheybani went on to say that the foreign exchange reserve accounts will also show a noticeable rise in the current year.

“Economic indicators portray a promising image of the country’s economy in 1382 (Iranian calendar year for March 2003 / March2004).” said Sheybani.

On the rising price of goods and services in the Iranian calendar years of 1381 and 1382, he noted: “The rate of inflation by the end of July 25th of this year was 16% which is almost in harmony with the rise in prices of last year and despite the sudden boost of prices at the beginning of the year, the prices of goods and services are now stable.”

He concluded by saying “To create more job opportunities, more financial resources and facilities were brought into the country’s economy which led to significant liquidity growth.”

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=19471&NewsKind=Business%20%26%20Economy
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(( Hey Mullahs, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS Please ))

"Interference" in Iran's Internal Affairs

November 08, 2003
The Associated Press

Syria does not doubt that President Bush is sincere in his urging a more stable Middle East but believes his policies are spoiling American relations with Arabs and Muslims worldwide, a Syrian Cabinet minister said Saturday.

The comment in a government newspaper was the first official Syrian reaction to Bush's speech Thursday in which he called for greater democracy in the Middle East and criticized Syria and Iran in particular, accusing them of torture and oppression.

Iran was harsher in its response, calling Bush's speech an "interference" in Iran's internal affairs and saying the American leader had no business preaching democracy after U.S. support of authoritarian leaders in the Mideast and elsewhere.

Syrian Minister of Immigrant Affairs Buthayna Shaaban addressed Bush, saying, "We do not doubt your intentions (that) you are really desirous to make the Middle East a safer and more stable place."

But "please allow us to tell you that your policy throughout the past years has raised the level of ... hatred, closed all peace horizons and caused big damage to the reputation of the United States," she wrote in the daily Al-Thawra.

Shaaban said solving the Middle East's problems requires dealing with people "on an equal footing" and abandoning "bias, violence, racism, occupation, settlement and repression." The comments were a repetition of Syrian criticism that the United States is biased toward Israel and that the Jewish state oppressed Palestinians and was occupying more Arab land.

Shaaban said persisting in current Middle East policies will cause "a bigger suffering to the region's peoples, widen the gap between the U.S. and the whole world, and also threaten international peace and security."

In his speech Thursday in Washington, Bush said that "the global wave of democracy has barely reached the Arab states. Many countries in the region are mired in poverty and women lack rights and children are denied proper schooling."

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031108/API/311080632&cachetime=5

Partial strikes of Petroleum Industry paralyze several provinces

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Nov 8, 2003

Partial strikes in Iran's Petroleum Industry and especially in the Petrochemical factories are paralyzing several provincial cities in Iran. The areas, most hit by these strikes, are the Northern and Southern parts of the country where fuel and necessary heating combustibles are missing and are resulting in the formation of long lines in front of the official distribution centers.

The distribution of the low available quantities are often leading to local and sporadic protests and slogans against the regime and many residents are starting to draw an analogy with the strikes which paralyzed Iran's Petroleum Industry and lead to the Islamic revolution of 1979.

It's to note that the strikes are following the controversial decision of the authorities to detach Iran's Petrochemical entities from the country's Petroleum Industry in an effort to privatize this sector. Many Iranians, especially the Petroleum workers, are considering such decision as part of the general policy of looting Iran's National Assets and their transfers to foreign companies or to the ruling political and economical Mafia.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_3445.shtml

Iran to accept tough nuclear inspections
Sat 8 November, 2003
By Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency says Iran has promised to hand over two crucial letters making official its acceptance of tougher nuclear inspections and a suspension of its controversial uranium enrichment programme.

"Next week we will get the letter for conclusion of the Additional Protocol," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters on Saturday after a more than 90 minute meeting in Vienna with the head of Iran's Supreme National Security, Hassan Rohani.

ElBaradei also said Iran had promised a letter formally announcing the uranium enrichment suspension next week.

When asked when the uranium enrichment will be stopped, Rohani said through an interpreter: "In the next week I will announce that."

Washington, which accuses Iran of covertly developing the capacity to build atomic weapons, branded Iran part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea and pre-war Iraq. Iran denies it wants an atomic weapon and insists its nuclear programme is peaceful.

Rohani's meeting with ElBaradei came days before the IAEA was expected to circulate among Vienna diplomats its latest report on nuclear inspections in Iran, a report ElBaradei said would detail more failures by Iran to report required information to the United Nations.

This report will be discussed at the November 20 meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors.

Asked about that report on Saturday, ElBaradei said "it is a factual report about what we have seen".

Iran promised to deliver a letter formally declaring its intention to sign the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran has signed.

SNAP INSPECTIONS

The protocol, created after the 1991 discovery of Iraq's secret atomic weapons programme, would give the IAEA the authority to conduct more intrusive, short-notice inspections of declared and undeclared sites to flush out any secret weapons-related activities.

Iran must give the IAEA the letter before the IAEA board meeting in order for the board to approve Tehran's intention to sign the protocol. Only then Iran can sign it.

Although it will take some time for Iran's parliament to ratify the protocol, Tehran has said it would allow the tougher inspections before ratification.

On October 21, Iranian officials told the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain that Tehran would not only sign the Additional Protocol but would temporarily stop enriching uranium as a confidence-building measure.

This had been requested of Iran in the IAEA board's tough September 12 resolution that set an October 31 deadline for Iran to give the IAEA a full declaration of all nuclear activities.

Enrichment is a process of purifying uranium to make it useable as nuclear fuel or in weapons.

But almost a week after the announced enrichment freeze, Iran admitted it had yet to take effect. One Western diplomat said the fact that Iran has not yet suspended its enrichment programme was a "very bad sign".

Diplomats told Reuters there had been disagreement with Iran on what constituted suspension. The French, Germans and British want all enrichment operations halted, whereas Iran wants only to halt its enrichment centrifuges and continue research work.

Rohani said on Saturday Tehran would abide by the deal reached with French, German and British foreign ministers.

Rohani was appointed by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and was originally viewed as a hardliner. But he is increasingly seen as representing the middle ground between Khamenei and the reform-minded President Mohammad Khatami.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=400707&section=news

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