TEHRAN, Feb 11: Iran's President Mohammad Khatami warned his hardline rivals on Wednesday they were turning young Iranians against religion and the Islamic Republic founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini exactly 25 years ago.
President Khatami's government has reluctantly agreed to stage parliamentary elections next week, but reformists say the polls have been rigged to ensure a conservative majority. The moderate leader said the Islamic state would only survive by reforming.
"Confronting people's wishes and ignoring people's demands in the name of religion... will only create disappointment among the young generation in the Islamic Republic and, God forbid, their religion," he said in an impassioned speech.
Addressing tens of thousands of people at an open-air ceremony in Tehran to mark a quarter-century of the 1979 revolution, the president vowed to continue pressing for reform in the remainder of his second term, which expires next year.
"Whether I can fulfil my promises or not, whether there is strong resistance or not, I know no other way than this and I will not choose any other path," he said.
But the crowd, many of them bussed in from provincial cities, appeared largely disinterested in President Khatami's words. Many former Khatami supporters have lost faith in his perennial promises of reform.
"He could have resisted more, the people were behind him but he missed opportunities," dissident Mohsen Sazgara said of the president. "The power we had was the people, but now we have lost them," he said in an interview.
Mohammad Khatami's relative helplessness in the face of hardliners opposed to his efforts to promote greater democracy, justice and social freedoms in the country of 66 million has been highlighted by the recent electoral dispute.
A 12-man unelected watchdog dominated by religious hardliners has barred more than 2,500 candidates from standing in the Feb 20 vote, saying they were unfit to hold office.
Most of those rejected were reformist allies of President Khatami, including dozens of current legislators. Analysts say the electoral row reflects inherent contradictions in the political system created by Ayatollah Khomeini that tried to marry the idea of a democratic republic with that of a theocracy headed by an all-powerful supreme leader.
"In our constitution we apparently have elections, a parliament and a president, but they are all caricatures," said Mr Sazgara, who was press aide to Ayatollah Khomeini during his exile in France, but later went to jail for criticizing the ayatollah's rule.
Reflecting on the revolution, he said: "We thought we were going to have freedom, democracy, a real parliament and human rights, but we do not."
CELEBRATIONS: At the anniversary celebrations around Tehran's Azadi Square, tens of thousands enjoyed a carnival-like atmosphere and joined in the traditional chants against the United States and Israel.
A British Union Jack flag and several effigies of US President George Bush were burned while helicopters tipped tinsel onto the crowd and hundreds of balloons in the national colours of red, green and white were released into the air. Those present had no doubts about the benefits the revolution had brought. -Reuters
