TEHRAN, June 26: 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.
In Washington, US President Barack Obama said that direct dialogue with Tehran would be affected by events in Iran, but said multilateral talks would 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,” Mr Kadkhodai said.
“Ten per cent 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 would also be present for the re-count.
Mr Kadkhodai earlier rejected opposition allegations of fraud in the poll.
“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 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election have receded after the authorities responded to the worst crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution with a crackdown.
State-run English-language Press TV said on Thursday that 20 people have been killed in the protests, including eight members of Iran’s Basij militia.
Other state media have reported that 17 civilians have been killed.
Mr Obama, who has made diplomatic overtures to Iran since taking office, said the crackdown on protesters would 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,” Mr 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.
“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 Friday noon prayers in Tehran, a cleric, Ahmad Khatami called upon 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.
Mr Khatami suggested that any demonstrator who resorted to violence during the protests should face the toughest punishment. “Anyone who takes up arms against the people is a mohareb and Islam has prescribed the toughest punishment for such offenders,” he said.—AFP