Iran seizes UK Embassy staff

Iran has repeatedly accused Britain and the United States of stoking the unrest that swept the country after the June 12 election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power amid complaints it was rigged. The Fars news agency said the eight UK Embassy staff members were arrested for having a "considerable role" in the riots.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said London had protested strongly to Tehran over the arrests, which he described as "harassment and intimidation of a kind which is quite unacceptable." He said the release of the staff was Britain's "top priority" and dismissed claims the embassy was behind the demonstrations as "wholly without foundation." Miliband said his European Union colleagues had agreed to a "strong, collective response" to any such "harassment and intimidation" against EU missions.

The Guardian Council, an unelected body of 12 jurists and clerics, said it would create a committee of political figures and candidate representatives to recount 10 percent of the ballots and draw up a report on the vote.

But Karroubi, a reformist former Parliament speaker who came a distant fourth, said in a letter to the council that a partial recount was "not enough" and called for an independent panel to probe "all aspects of the election." Mousavi rejected the panel outright on Saturday, while the other defeated candidate, Mohsen Rezai, has agreed to be part of the committee if Mousavi and Karroubi also agree to nominate representatives to the body. But Mousavi, who has spearheaded the massive public opposition to the vote, has demanded a rerun, refusing to be cowed by a persistent crackdown against his supporters. "Limiting the probe into complaints about electoral irregularities to recounting 10 percent of the ballot boxes cannot attract people's trust and convince public opinion about the results," he said on his campaign website; Kazinform cites Arab News. See www.arabnews.com for full version.