An injured protester is led to safety after more trouble on the streets of Tehran on Sunday Picture: Reuters
IRANIAN officials have declared the hotly disputed presidential election result to be correct, after a partial recount designed to placate the opposition.
State television reported that Guardian Council Secretary Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati had yest
erday presented interior minister Sadegh Mahsouli with a letter saying the council had approved the election after a recount of 10 per cent of the ballots.
Requests for a new election and allegations of voting irregularities were rejected.
Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi claims he, not incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the rightful winner of the 12 June election, and has called for a new poll.
Iran's state-run English-language Press TV television station said the recount of a random 10 per cent of the votes, carried out yesterday, had shown no irregularities.
Official results of the election, released on 13 June, sparked the most widespread street protests in Iran since the country's 1979 Islamic revolution.
Mr Mousavi and two other defeated presidential candidates had submitted a total of 646 complaints about the election.
But the Guardian Council said most of the complaints were not considered as election irregularities and that it had dismissed them after conducting "precise and thorough studies" of the election process.
The council is a 12-man body – six senior clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader and six Islamic jurists – which must ensure all laws agree with sharia law and Iran's constitution. It also vets aspiring candidates for presidential elections.
Reporting from different locations where recounting took place, Iranian news agencies said representatives of Mr Mousavi and another defeated candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, were not present even though they had been invited.
"This recount is being done before (state broadcaster] IRIB cameras in various provinces and cities and we will subsequently announce the outcome for public information," the Guardian Council said.
Press TV broadcast live from one Tehran district where a Guardian Council supervisor was quoted as saying the recount in this area had shown no major irregularities.
The official said 34 ballot boxes, representing 10 per cent of the total in the district, had been opened under "full and precise supervision". He went on: "The results were positive – no irregularities in the results announced."
A witness said riot police had been deployed in force yesterday along a section of tree-lined Vali-ye Asr, Tehran's most famous boulevard. That relatively prosperous area is a stronghold of Mousavi supporters.
In the northern city of Babolsar, the semi-official Fars News Agency said recounting there had not changed the result.
State media say 20 people were killed in the aftermath of the election, and the authorities have accused Mr Mousavi of having responsibility for the bloodshed. He says the government is to blame.
Mass protests by demonstrators who said the poll was rigged were broken up by pro-government militia and riot police. The demonstrations had echoes of the Islamic revolution that toppled the shah and exposed rifts in the clerical leadership.
The hardline rulers, locked in a row with the West over nuclear activity and who say the poll was fair, have also blamed the trouble on foreign powers.
Four quized as war of words goes onIRAN was yesterday interrogating four local members of staff from the British embassy in Tehran.
The authorities earlier released the other five embassy workers detained in Tehran at the weekend.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown condemned the Iranian action. Speaking at a news conference in Downing Street, he said he was "deeply disappointed", adding: "Iran's action…is unacceptable, unjustified and without foundation."
Iran's intelligence minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said on Sunday the British embassy had played a role in the unrest following this month's election, including sending people among the protesters telling them what to do and what to chant. Iran and Britain have already expelled two of each other's diplomats since the election.
Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki was last week quoted as saying Iran was reviewing whether to downgrade ties with Britain.
But a foreign ministry spokesman yesterday said closing down any foreign embassy or cutting diplomatic ties was not on Iran's agenda.
The full article contains 706 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
