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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

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