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Election watchdog sets up panel, insists Iran vote clean
 
 
 
 
 
 
 AFP - Saturday, June 27
TEHRAN (AFP) - - Iran's election watchdog is to set up a panel, including representatives of defeated candidates, to report on the disputed poll, its spokesman said on Friday while insisting the election was the country's cleanest ever.
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In Washington, US President Barack Obama meanwhile that direct dialogue with Tehran would be affected by events in Iran, but said multilateral talks will continue.
The Group of Eight leading world powers, meanwhile, urged Tehran to halt post-election violence but without questioning the result of the June 12 poll.
The Guardians Council will form a commission, including representatives of defeated candidates, to carry out a partial re-count and draft a report on the poll, spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai said, quoted by ISNA news agency.
"The Guardians Council has decided to set up a special commission of political figures and representatives of candidates who have been protesting (poll results) to draft a report on the election," Kadkhodai said.
"Ten percent of the votes will be re-counted in the presence of this commission and a report for the public will be published," he said, adding that media will also be present for the re-count.
Kadkhodai earlier rejected opposition allegations of fraud that have brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets.
"After 10 days of examination, we did not see any major irregularities," he told the state news agency IRNA.
"We have had no fraud in any presidential election and this one was the cleanest election we have had. I can say with certainty that there was no fraud in this election."
Two weeks after the vote, protests in Tehran over hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election have receded after the authorities responded to the worst crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution with a fierce crackdown that has intensified despite a chorus of international criticism.
State-run English-language Press TV said on Thursday that 20 people have been killed in the protests, including eight members of Irans Basij militia. Other state media have reported that 17 civilians have been killed.
Obama, who has made diplomatic overtures to Iran since taking office, said the crackdown on protesters will affect direct dialogue with Tehran.
"There is no doubt that any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran is going to be affected by the events of the last several weeks," Obama said.
But "you're going to continue to see some multilateral discussions with Iran," he added.
Foreign ministers from G8 leading powers meeting in Italy urged Iran to immediately put a halt to post-election violence but refrained from calling into question the poll result.
Despite calls from Italy and France for a firm condemnation, the G8 foreign ministers backed off from harsh criticism and instead said the crisis should be settled "soon" through peaceful means.
"We want violence to stop immediately," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
Russia warned that isolating Iran with a toughly-worded condemnation could trigger a backlash from Tehran that would jeopardise cooperation with the Islamic republic over its nuclear programme.
"We are concerned about the aftermath of the Iranian presidential election," the foreign ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States said in their statement.
"We fully respect the sovereignty of Iran. At the same time we deplore post-election violence which led to the loss of lives of Iranian civilians and urge Iran to respect fundamental human rights."
But in a nationally broadcast sermon at the main weekly Muslim prayers in Tehran, hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami called on the government to impose even tighter controls on the foreign media.
"How can they be allowed to wander round the country with their satellite phones giving information that provokes people to take to the streets," he asked.
Khatami suggested that any demonstrator who resorted to violence during the protests should face the death penalty. "Anyone who takes up arms against the people is a mohareb and Islam has prescribed the toughest punishment for such offenders," he said.
US senators bluntly charged on Thursday that the election was rigged and vowed to help the opposition defeat curbs on news and the social networking Internet sites it has used to organise demonstrations.
Protests have nearly stopped since supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned last week that the defeated candidates would be held responsible for any "blood, violence and chaos" on the streets of Tehran.
On Wednesday, an attempt by a few hundred demonstrators to gather near parliament was quashed by police and militiamen, witnesses said.
Despite restrictions on the foreign media, images of police brutality have still spread worldwide via amateur video over the Internet.
One clip of the fatal shooting of young woman demonstrator Neda Agah-Soltan has come to symbolise the regime's iron-fisted response to the protests.
Arash Hejazi, a doctor who tried to save her, told the BBC the shooter was identified by the crowd as a Basij Islamist militiaman.
 
 
 
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 Enlarge Photo
 
Iranian demonstrators hold up a placard showing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a protest against the recent Iranian elections in Los Angeles on June 22, 2009. Iran's election watchdog is to set up a panel including representatives of defeated candidates to report on the disputed poll, its spokesman said on Friday while insisting the election was the country's cleanest ever.
 
 
 
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