Skip to main content

Obama condemns Iran over violence

Iran remained tense on Wednesday as US President Barack Obama expressed outrage over a crackdown on protests and said significant questions remained about the legitimacy of the country's elections.

Tehran has refused to overturn the result of the disputed poll but supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei agreed to extend by five days a Wednesday deadline to examine vote complaints, ISNA news agency said.

As international alarm mounted over the crisis, the most serious challenge to the Islamic regime in its 30-year history, Britain said it was expelling two Iranian diplomats after a similar move by Tehran.

At the same time, other European nations hauled in envoys to protest at the election and the repression of protests.

Iran's top election watchdog, the Guardians Council, insisted the vote would stand.

"We witnessed no major fraud or breach," spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai said on English-language state television Press TV.

"Therefore, there is no possibility of an annulment taking place."

The council has acknowledged more votes were cast than there were eligible voters in 50 of 366 constituencies.

The opposition claims the June 12 poll that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power for a second four-year term was rife with fraud.

Late on Tuesday, defeated opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi released on his website a report promised to show "electoral fraud and irregularities."

The three-page report called for a "commission of truth and justice acceptable to all the parties to examine the entire election process".

It denounced claimed "large-scale" official support for Ahmadinejad and spoke of ballot papers being printed the day of the election without serial numbers, doubts about whether ballot boxes were empty when they arrived at the polls and candidates' representatives being banned from polling places.

World leaders are calling for an immediate halt to violence and Tehran has responded by accusing Western governments of interfering.

source: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/world/world/general/obama-condemns-iran-over-violence/1549491.aspx

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Royal garb

Kim Kardashian reacts to photographers at the Noon by Noor launch event in West Hollywood, Calif., Wednesday night. Noon by Noor is a fashion collection designed by Kingdom of Bahrain royalty Noor Rashid Al Khalifa and Haya Mohammed Al Khalifa. (AP/Chris Pizzello)       The Jakarta Post | Thu, 07/21/2011 3:04 PM

US Stocks Surge to Highest Level of Year on Housing News

By Mil Arcega Washington 24 July 2009 The benchmark Dow Jones industrial average of the top US companies broke the 9,000 point mark Thursday on strong earnings reports and an improving housing picture. Wall Street extended its recent gains Thursday after a new housing report showed sales of previously owned U.S. homes rose at an annual pace of 3.6 percent in June. It was the third straight month of rising home sales. "The markets are reacting to the news today in the context of other things they've been seeing and reading in recent weeks, and that's that the economy does appear to have hit a bottom," said David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities. Investors reacted positively to earnings reports from Ford, Ebay, AT&T and higher sales of Apple's new iPhone. Resler says the positive earnings give a much needed confidence boost for the struggling U.S. economy. "I think...