Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called off a trip to Libya for an African Union summit yesterday that would have given him another chance to appear at an international forum after his disputed re-election.
A spokesman at Ahmadinejad’s office said the visit had been cancelled. He gave no reason. It would have been the president’s second foray abroad since the June 12 poll set off Iran’s most dramatic internal unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
In a show of confidence, Ahmadinejad had attended a regional summit in Russia four days after the vote, ignoring huge street protests by supporters of losing candidates Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, who both say the election was rigged.
The Guardian Council, a supervisory body, on Monday endorsed the election result and dismissed complaints of irregularities, saying a partial recount had shown these were baseless.
But Karoubi, a reformist cleric who came fourth in the poll, remained defiant, saying in a statement posted on his party’s Web site that he viewed Ahmadinejad’s government as illegitimate.
Karoubi and Mousavi, a moderate former prime minister, have both called for the election to be annulled and held again.
“I don’t consider this government legitimate,” Karoubi said. “I will continue my fight under any condition by every means, and I’m ready to cooperate with pro-reform people and groups.”
The government halted the publication yesterday of Karoubi’s Etemad Melli party’s newspaper after said he would refuse to recognize Ahmadinejad’s re-election, the party said on its Web site.
“They wanted the statement censored and not published — so the newspaper will not be published today,” the party said.
The newspaper is one of the few reformist publications to have survived a crackdown under Ahmadinejad’s rule. However, it chief editor Mohammad Ghoochani is among scores of reformist leaders and journalists detained in a crackdown on activists and protesters in the wake of the disputed election.
Karoubi, a white-bearded cleric who was close to Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, demanded the release of “thousands” of people arrested during the unrest.
“What is most important now is to preserve our revolutionary and political attitude and confront those who want to sideline us. We should all preserve our revolutionary unity,” he said.
Iran has accused foreign powers, notably Britain and the US, of fomenting the post-election demonstrations.
The semi-official Fars news agency said one of three local staff of the British embassy still detained in Tehran had helped organize the protests, in which at least 20 people were killed.
“Among the three detained British embassy staff there was one who ... had a remarkable role during the recent unrest in managing it behind the scenes,” it said, citing no source.
The authorities detained nine Iranian employees at the British embassy on Sunday. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Monday five had been freed and four were still being questioned.
The report by Fars, which first reported the detentions, suggested that another employee had been freed since then.
As hardliners try to consolidate their grip, the next formal step is for Khamenei to confirm Ahmadinejad as president. Parliament will swear him in a few weeks later.
“I will not take part in any ceremonies related to this government such as the swearing-in ceremony,” Karoubi said.
He has ridiculed statements by Ahmadinejad and his allies that the protests were part of a foreign-inspired conspiracy to instigate a “velvet revolution” to topple the 30-year-old Islamic Republic.
“Dozens of political and religious people were arrested and sent to prisons and solitary confinement to push them to confess about [plotting] a color revolution,” Karoubi said.
“Such velvet revolutions happened in former Soviet countries ... Have we become part of the former Soviet Union?” he said.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS