Iran: Mousavi addresses protesters

Defeated reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has appeared at an opposition rally against the results of Friday's presidential elections. He told a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters that he was ready to take part in a new poll.

"The vote of the people is more important than Mousavi or any other person," Mousavi (pictured above, arms raised) told his green-clad supporters from the roof of his car.

The protest against hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election took place in Tehran's Revolution Square. People chanted: "Mousavi we support you. We will die, but retrieve our votes," in defiance of reports that militias had been authorised to use live rounds on protestors.

This was Mousavi's first public appearance since Friday's disputed elections. He has claimed that only widespread electoral fraud can explain the results of Friday's poll, when Ahmadinejad apparently won by 63 per cent to 34 per cent.

Meanwhile, the US vice-president Joe Biden said on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday that there were "real doubts" about the outcome of the election.

Several of Mousavi's seniors aides have been arrested by police, and western reporters in Tehran have witnessed many beatings of pro-Mousavi protestors by riot police and plain-clothes officers, backed by stick-wielding basiji, the paramilitary volunteers who operate as licensed thugs. Ian Black of the Guardian watched a basiji chase a man into the middle of a traffic jam and beat him repeatedly with an iron bar.

A 21-year-old student told Black: "For years Iranian TV has shown Israeli forces attacking innocent people in Palestine. But these riot police are more brutal than them."

The BBC's John Leyne reported this morning on the Today programme that many people were still out on the streets and rooftops crying "death to the dictator", thus directing their protest not only at Ahmadinejad but at the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. That, said Leyne, is a challenge to the whole basis of the Islamic Republic.

The Associated Press has reported that Mousavi - who apparently has not been arrested, despite veiled threats from Ahmadinejad - has asked Iran's 'guardian council', a group of 12 senior clerics, to annul the election result and has met privately with Ayatollah Khamenei to seek his support for the annulment. Today, state television reported that Khamenei had asked the guardian council to "precisely consider" the complaints.

At a victory rally in Tehran on Sunday, Ahmadinejad denied the vote was rigged and dismissed the unrest as "passions after a soccer match". Iranians were united, he claimed, but with 40 million people taking part in the election it was natural for some to be disappointed.

While Biden questioned the polling, and addressed the suppression of Mousavi's supporters over the weekend, he was careful to stress that the US would continue with its new policy of trying to "engage" Tehran. "Our interests are the same before the election as after the election," said the VP. "We want them to cease and desist from seeking a nuclear weapon and having one in its possession and, secondly, to stop supporting terror."

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING
Bill Keller and Michael Slackman, the New York Times: "Whether his 63 per cent victory is truly the will of the people or the result of fraud, it demonstrated that Mr. Ahmadinejad is the shrewd and ruthless front man for a clerical, military and political elite that is more unified and emboldened than at any time since the 1979 revolution."

Simon Tisdall, the Guardian: "Mir Hossein Mousavi's candidacy held out the prospect of limited, tension-easing reciprocity in external affairs just as a new US administration tried to cut away the prejudices of a 30-year estrangement. That fleeting dream of modest renewal now lies in a thousand pieces, shattered like the bones of Tehran's youthful protesters."

Robert Fisk, the Independent: "We met Ahmedinejad the Good yesterday, preaching to us at an elaborately-staged press conference, talking of the noble, compassionate, honourable, smart people of Iran. But we also met Ahmedinejad the Bad, swearing to thousands of baying supporters that he would name the "corrupt" men who had stood against him in Friday's election."