Ahmadinejad demands US president’s apology
TEHRAN. June 26. KAZINFORM. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama yesterday of behaving like his predecessor toward Tehran and said there was not much point in talking to Washington unless the US president apologized; Kazinform refers to Arab News.
Obama said Tuesday he was "appalled and outraged" by a postelection crackdown and Washington withdrew invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend Independence Day celebrations on July 4 - stalling efforts to improve ties with Tehran.
"Mr. Obama made a mistake to say those things ... our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously (former President George W.) Bush used to say," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
"Do you want to speak with this tone? If that is your stance then what is left to talk about ... I hope you avoid interfering in Iran's affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian nation is informed of it," he said.
Defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi meanwhile said that threats and pressure would not stop him from pursuing his campaign to scrap the results of the disputed election. "I won't refrain from securing the rights of the Iranian people ... because of personal interests and the fear of threats," he said in a statement on his newspaper website, Kalemeh.
Newspapers reported yesterday that Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and over 100 MPs refused to attend a victory dinner party hosted by Ahmadinejad. "Apart from 70 members of the revolution faction, which backs Ahmadinejad, only 30 other (conservatives) turned up," the reformist Etemad Melli newspaper said, adding that 100 boycotted the event.
To add to the establishment's discomfort, dissident preacher Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri warned that continued suppression of opposition protests could threaten the very basis of the Islamic republic; Kazinform cites Arab News. See www.arabnews.com for full version.