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

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iranian Clerics Protest Election Results

By VOA News 05 July 2009 A group of leading Iranian clerics has criticized the results of the country's disputed presidential election. In a statement released Sunday, clerics from the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom said Iran's official electoral watchdog, the Guardian Council, failed to adequately investigate claims of vote rigging by the opposition. The pro-reform group questioned whether the Council's validation is enough to legitimize the vote. Last week, the 12-member Council upheld the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I ranian reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi during a press conference after polls closed in Tehran, 12 June 2009 Defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has criticized the outcome. In a 24-page report posted to his Web site Saturday, Mr. Mousavi accuses supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad of handing out cash to voters in the run-up to...
Post a Comment
Read more

Military chief promotes 35 generals

Indonesian Military (TNI) chief Gen. Djoko Santoso has promoted 35 generals, consisting of 16 army generals, 11 navy admirals and 8 air force marshals. “It is expected that this time promotion will further enhance and improve the military performance so that we could give out the best output,” he said on Friday. Among those generals who receive the promotion is Rear Adm. Gunadi who is now posted as inspector general at the Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. Langgeng Sulistyono, who is now posted as Diponegoro Military Commander and Rear Marshal Agus Dwi Putranto, who is installed as Abdulrahman Saleh Air Force Base Commander.
Post a Comment
Read more

Chinese

Identifying someone in Indonesia as a member of the Chinese ( orang Tionghoa ) ethnic group is not an easy matter, because physical characteristics, language, name, geographical location, and life-style of Chinese Indonesians are not always distinct from those of the rest of the population. Census figures do not record Chinese as a special group, and there are no simple racial criteria for membership in this group. There are some people who are considered Chinese by themselves and others, despite generations of intermarriage with the local population, resulting in offspring who are less than one-quarter Chinese in ancestry. On the other hand, there are some people who by ancestry could be considered halfChinese or more, but who regard themselves as fully Indonesian. Furthermore, many people who identify themselves as Chinese Indonesians cannot read or write the Chinese language. Alth...
Post a Comment
Read more