1.

World

RAFSANJANI TO FACE TEHRAN MAYOR

** Iran goes to presidential runoff **

CNN
June 19, 2005

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/06/18/iran.ballot/index.html

TEHRAN -- Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will face Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a runoff election for the Iranian presidency, the Ministry of Interior said.

With all ballots counted, conservative Rafsanjani had more than 6.1 million votes, while the harder-line conservative Ahmadinejad had 5.7 million, Iranian state-run radio and television announced Saturday. The top two candidates face each other Friday.

Reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi trailed in third place with nearly 5.1 million votes.

The conservative former police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and reformist Mostafa Moin followed in fourth and fifth respectively with more than 4 million votes.

About 31 million people -- nearly two-thirds of eligible voters -- took part in Friday's election. Of their ballots, 1.2 million were thrown out because they were "spoiled," the government said.

While Iran's U.N. Ambassador Javad Zarif called the turnout "better than expected," it was lower than in previous presidential elections.

When Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad face each other Friday, they'll offer Iranian voters two strikingly different perspectives.

Rafsanjani, a conservative, has taken softer stances in recent months. He's expressed a desire to improve Iran's strained ties with the West -- including the United States, which has had no formal diplomatic ties with Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

In 2002 President Bush termed Iran part of an "axis of evil," along with North Korea and Iraq, then under Saddam Hussein.

Ahmadinejad, a hard-line conservative, has called for embracing the principles of the revolution. He has much support among vigilantes and popular militias, as well as poor people. He wants to turn some cultural institutions, created in recent years, back into mosques.

The outcome of the election is not expected to change Iran's theocratic government. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameinei still has the last word in matters of state.

Many of President Mohammed Khatami's initiatives were blocked by clerical hard-liners who hold vast power under Iran's Islamic government.

The reform-minded cleric is barred from seeking a third consecutive term.

--CNN's Christiane Amanpour and Shirzad Bozorgmehr contributed to this report.

2.

International

IRANIAN REFORM PARTY HINTS THAT IT WILL SUPPORT INSIDER
By Michael Slackman

New York Times
June 20, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/international/middleeast/20iran.html

[PHOTO CAPTION: Children peek into the Tehran campaign offices of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a surprise second in the first round of the election for president.]

TEHRAN -- The reform party of Iran hinted Sunday that it would throw its support behind the former two-term president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pillar of the Islamic revolution, in a runoff presidential vote this week.

The proposal, made reluctantly, came after a disputed first-round election cut reformist candidates out of the race and propelled the ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran into second place, behind Mr. Rafsanjani.

Throughout the day, the reform movement appeared caught between the impulse to boycott the runoff, scheduled for Friday, and trying to use all its resources to help elect Mr. Rafsanjani. It eventually came down somewhere in the middle.

While Mr. Rafsanjani has tried to paint himself as a pragmatist whose credentials are acceptable to reformers and conservatives, his longtime allegiance to the very system reformers want to change made them wary of giving him full support.

In a statement on Sunday, Iran's leading reform party, the Islamic Participation Front, did not refer to Mr. Rafsanjani by name, but instead said the party planned to get involved in the runoff to help beat back what it called a play by military forces in the country to determine the outcome of the election.

"Two fronts are being formed in the country," the statement said, "one front that wants to move forward by relying on a political military party and wants to be the winner of the election no matter what. And another front which is seriously worried about extremism."

The reform movement made the gesture as conservatives were lining up behind the former mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hard-liner whose political meetings are run like religious gatherings and who begins his press conferences with readings from the Koran, a throwback to the early days of the 1979 revolution.

"I think the mayor can win,'" said Raisdana Fariborz, an economist and political analyst in Tehran.

"The people may not give their vote to Hashemi," she said, referring to Mr. Rafsanjani, "but the followers of these conservative leaders, they are organized and they definitely give their vote to Ahmadinejad."

At Mr. Rafsanjani's campaign office, there was an air of grave concern. A media adviser wanted Mr. Rafsanjani, who is accustomed to the trappings of power that come with leadership, to spend the next three days working the streets, proving he is a man of the people. But his aides said he had rejected the idea, and instead would try to win by using proxies -- including reform party leaders -- to convince voters that his opponent is dangerous for society.

While Mr. Rafsanjani's aides were trying a top-down approach, supporters of the conservative mayor were planning a bottom-up strategy, reaching out to individuals, particularly in towns and villages far from the urban center.

In a four-story, rose-colored building in central Tehran, dozens of Mr. Ahmadinejad's supporters held a campaign meeting on Sunday at which they received orders for the coming days. "Tell people he is young, he is 48, and he can insert new blood into the system," said Maisam Neili, head of the political committee for Mr. Ahmadinejad's campaign

The reform movement was thrown off balance by the unexpected success of Mr. Ahmadinejad. The government announced at the close of the polls that there would probably be a runoff between two of three candidates: Mr. Rafsanjani, Dr. Mostafa Moin, a reform candidate, and a former police chief, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a conservative. But by 7 a.m. the next day, a spokesman for the Guardian Council, which is not supposed to be involved in the vote count, announced that the mayor of Tehran was in first place.

Even before final results were announced Saturday night, Mr. Karroubi, the former speaker of Parliament, said in a news conference that the election had been rigged. He was joined later by Dr. Moin, the reform candidate who finished in fifth place, who charged interference by the military, though he did not say whom or what he was referring to.

The government continued Sunday to deny the accusations of election fraud. The Guardian Council announced Sunday night on state-run news broadcasts that no one had filed a formal complaint with the council and that unless one was presented by the end of the day Monday, the runoff would go ahead on Friday as planned.

A spokesman for Mr. Rafsanjani, Hamzeh Karami, said the campaign would also not address the election fraud charges, though Mr. Karami said he had information that hard-line supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad had tried to influence the race. Mr. Ahmadinejad is adored by lower-income city residents who see him as man of the people, and abhorred by the wealthier and more urban Iranians who fear he will try to roll back the social freedoms they have won over the past few years. Appointed mayor by the conservatives in control of the Tehran City Council, he is short, slight, unshaven and openly hostile to foreigners, particularly toward Americans.

As mayor, Mr. Ahmadinejad initially pursued a conservative agenda in Tehran, turning cultural centers into prayer halls, for example. But over time, his focus has shifted to more practical issues, like repairing potholes, for which he won support in many parts of the city.

Mr. Neili said that if Mr. Ahmadinejad were elected president there would be a return to conservative social practices. "Excessive practices, like we see between boys and girls, these kinds of freedoms will surely not be supported," he said.

The campaign meeting on Sunday was held in an open garage space, where young men, clerics and a few women in heavy black chadors sat barefoot on thin beige carpeting listening to instructions from campaign organizers.

The campaign workers were directed not to discuss the charges of vote-rigging and not to criticize Mr. Rafsanjani. In fact, they were told that they should commend him as an elder statesman, and to promise that if elected, Mr. Ahmadinejad would seek his counsel.

--Nazila Fathi contributed reporting for this article.

3.

Special Report

Iran

IRAN POLL CHALLENGER ACCUSED OF BALLOT FRAUD
By Robert Tait

** Dispute over conservative who won place in run-off vote **

Guardian (UK)
June 20, 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1510156,00.html

Iran's presidential election was thrown into uncharted territory yesterday after a hardline candidate who unexpectedly won his way into a run-off vote was accused of ballot-rigging.

The allegations against the ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 49, came not only from losing candidates in Friday's first round, but also from aides to the frontrunner, the pragmatic cleric and former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Mr. Rafsanjani's suspicions have intensified the controversy surrounding Mr. Ahmadinejad's surprise showing. He confounded pollsters to capture nearly 20% of the vote. Mr. Rafsanjani polled 21%. The mayor, a former revolutionary guard commander, wants to reinforce Iran's strict Islamic code.

Mr. Rafsanjani's aides say Mr. Ahmadinejad may have stuffed ballot boxes, bought votes and used improper influence on the guardian council, the religious watchdog overseeing the election.

"We are suspicious. We feel that he was not so popular as to gain this number of votes," said Amir Mohseni, deputy head of Mr. Rafsanjani's campaign in Tehran.

"We are trying to build up evidence. We are interviewing voters and trying to get information from official sources, such as the guardian council and the interior ministry. Under the law, we are able to present complaints against the procedure of the election and we are going to take that opportunity."

Mr. Rafsanjani's campaign managers fear that such abuses -- if true -- may be repeated in this Friday's run-off. The campaign's complaints bolster those of Mehdi Karroubi, a moderate cleric who finished third, and the leading reformist, Mostafa Moin, who came fifth after a campaign in which many of his supporters were attacked and beaten by religious vigilantes.

Analysts also expressed deep scepticism. "I cannot believe that Ahmadinejad won 5.7m votes," one commentator said. "I think he got one million extra votes from somewhere. I have serious doubts about these results."

Mr. Karroubi, who had seemed poised during Saturday's count to finish second after a populist promise to pay every Iranian £30 to alleviate poverty, said: "Money has changed hands.

"I see this election as being rigged. Some people affiliated to the revolutionary guards and some others exercise influence over the guardian council. I want them to sue me, so I would be able to expose their names in my defence."

Mr. Moin's Islamic Iran Participation Front accused the guardian council of funding an £8m campaign to mobilize 300,000 Islamic militias to ensure a hardliner's success.

"Take seriously the danger of fascism," Mr Moin said. "Such creeping and complex attempts will eventually lead to militarism, authoritarianism, as well as social and political suffocation in the country."

Critics pointed to other irregularities, including Mr. Ahmadinejad's announcement on Saturday that he would be in the run-off, hours before official results were issued. Mr. Ahmadinejad dismissed the claims. "I would expect a respected cleric to be more tolerant and accurate," he said of Mr. Karroubi.

The interior ministry said 62% of Iran's 47 million voters had taken part in the poll.. There were 1.2m spoiled ballots -- a high number that may reflect widespread disenchantment with the Islamic system in a country where public-sector employees are obliged to vote and get an electoral stamp in their identity booklets.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's young supporters in the Basij, the hardcore of volunteers which enforces Iran's Islamic dress code and separation of the sexes, celebrated into the early hours yesterday, chanting slogans in the same Tehran parks where secular Iranians staged eve-of-poll parties.

Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, said yesterday during her tour of the Middle East that the election was not a serious step towards democracy: "Any election in which thousands of people are disqualified by fiat, and in which women are disqualified as a class, barely deserves to be given that title, particularly in a place that several years ago seemed to be moving in a different direction."

4.

POLL BOYCOTT CALL DIVIDES REFORMISTS IN IRAN
By Behzad Farsian

Telegraph (UK)
June 20, 2005

Original source: Telegraph (UK)

Iran's reformist camp, suffering a devastating defeat in the first round of the presidential elections, is divided over a call to boycott the second round.

The conservative-turned-moderate cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani faces a tense run-off battle next Friday with the ultra-hardline former mayor of Teheran, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, who was placed second.

The reformists, headed by Mehdi Karoubi and Mustafa Moin, came in third and fifth, putting them out of the contest.

The heads of the reformist parties will meet today in emergency session to discuss their future role in addition to deciding whether to call on their supporters to boycott the second round.

The liberals have an awkward choice on Friday: vote for the pragmatic Rafsanjani or urge a boycott.

"Between bad and worse, it's better to select bad," said Morteza Fallah, the managing editor of the reformist Eqbal daily newspaper, labelling Rafsanjani as the lesser of two evils.

"The elections have showed us that those with power and money have influence in Iranian politics," he said. "But we have accepted the people's choice and we will continue to push the new government on social and democratic issues."

However, many residents in the affluent northern suburbs of Teheran fear an Ahmadinejad win could reverse the cautious social reforms that have been achieved under President Mohammad Khatami and further dent Iran's sluggish relations with the West.

As mayor of Teheran, Mr. Ahmadinjad moved to "Islamize" the capital by promoting Shia religious festivals and restricting social and cultural activities.

Talk of re-starting relations with the "Great Satan" is out of the question.

Amir Tabatabaei, a 22-year engineering student and a reformist supporter who voted for Mr. Moin in the first round, will stay at home on Friday for the second round. "I don't like either Rafsanjani or Ahmadinejad," he said. "I'm not going to vote, but I know some of my friends will now switch to Rafsanjani just to keep Ahemdinejad out."

A Nobel peace prize winner, Shirin Ebadi, who led calls for a boycott in the first round, was among the first opposition figures to say she would not vote in the second round, arguing that the process was flawed.

On the other side of the reform divide, Ibrahim Yazdi, the leader of the banned Iran Freedom Movement, said Iranians should vote and work within the framework of the political system, claiming that a Rafsanjani win would unite the reformists in the new government and create an integrated opposition.

"It's not the legitimacy of the government we have to question [after the elections], it's the credibility of the government that is in question," he said.

5.

Opinion

REVOLUTION FAILS IRANIANS

Telegraph (UK)
June 20, 2005

Original source: Telegraph

It is a measure of the reformers' plight in Iran that they may feel compelled to vote for Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for fear of something worse.

The second round of the presidential election on Friday will pit the wily cleric, one of the leading figures of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, against the ultra-conservative former mayor of Teheran, Mahmood Ahmadinejad. In the first round, the main reformist candidate, former education minister Mustafa Moin, came only fifth out of a field of seven.

The reformers' hopes rose, and were to some extent fulfilled, by the election of Mohammed Khatami as president in 1997. They were further boosted by the victory of their candidates in the 2000 parliamentary poll, a contest in which Mr. Rafsanjani failed to win a seat.

But they proved almost powerless against the revolutionary principle of velayat-e faqih (the guardianship of the Islamic jurist), whereby those elected could be overruled by clerical bodies appointed by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Mr. Rafsanjani has headed one of those bodies, the Council of Expediency, for the past eight years.

It is this lack of effectiveness, rather than the electorate's diminished desire for reform, that sank the liberal cause in the first round last Friday. Revolutionary credentials and long experience at the top (he was president between 1989 and 1997) lend Mr. Rafsanjani the air of someone who can fix things, whether it be a sluggish economy or the nuclear stand-off with the United States.

At a humbler level, the same applies to Mr. Ahmadinejad, who in his two years as mayor left his mark on the capital by building roads and hospitals.

Next Friday, Mr. Ahmadinejad will be able to count on the core conservative vote. Mr. Rafsanjani, by contrast, will have to woo the understandably disheartened reformist camp.

Some of them, such as the human rights campaigner Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, have said they will boycott the second round. Others are considering what advice to give their supporters.

The choice is between a further reversal of reforms introduced during the first part of Mr. Khatami's time in office, and a gamble that Mr. Rafsanjani, whose previous presidency was stained by murders of dissidents and economic instability, has really changed his spots.

Through political oppression and failure to create jobs, the revolution has failed Iranians. But it is proving extraordinarily difficult to bring those responsible to account.