US ‘stirred up Iran’, says Hugo Chavez

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, a close ally of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on Wednesday that he believes the United States and European countries have had a hand in stirring up protests in Iran. He also said he was "completely sure" that the Iranian president had fairly won re-election on June 12.

Chavez, who has long accused the US of engineering a coup against him in 2002, offered no evidence to support his allegation but said the unrest in Tehran followed a pattern seen in various countries, where "behind it is the CIA and the imperial hand of European countries and the United States".

Chavez was sharing his thoughts at a summit meeting with the leaders of Ecuador, Bolivia and other south American countries as further bloody clashes were witnessed in Tehran between protestors loyal to the defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and Iranian security services.

The Guardian reported that helicopters hovered overhead as riot police beat demonstrators gathered in Baharestan Square, near the parliament building. CNN reported a female witness saying that hundreds of unidentified men armed with clubs, presumed to be the notorious Basij militiamen, had emerged from a mosque to confront the protestors. "They beat a woman so savagely that she was drenched in blood and her husband fainted," the witness said. "They were beating people like hell. It was a massacre."

Other developments in Iran on Wednesday:

♦ Seventy academics have been arrested after a meeting with Mousavi, according to a report on the Kalemeh website, which is affiliated with the defeated reformist candidate. It is also rumoured that Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a university professor, has been arrested after accusing the government of imposing martial law.

♦ A third of all Iranian MPs snubbed an invitation to a party on Wednesday night to celebrate Ahmadinejad's re-election, according to a BBC report. All 290 MPs were invited, but 105 failed to show.

♦ One of the other defeated candidates in the June 12 election, Mehdi Karroubi, used his website to call the government "illegitimate". Although the country's Guardian Council has clearly rejected calls for a new vote, Karoubi continues to argue that, because of "irregularities", the June 12 vote should be annulled.

♦ Iran has hinted that it may withdraw its ambassador from London in a "scaling down" of diplomatic relations with Britain. Foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said he was under pressure from members of Iran's parliament to downgrade diplomatic representation following demonstrations outside the Iranian embassy in London.

♦ The family of Neda Soltani - also known in some reports as Neda Agha Soltan - the university student whose killing by a sniper in Tehran last Saturday was recorded on film and seen across the world, have apparently been forced out of their home in east Tehran in a bid to stop them talking. There are also reports that Neda's funeral has been cancelled.

♦ Former Harvard colleagues of photo-journalist Iason Athanasiadis, known to readers of The First Post for his photo essay 'Children of the Revolution', have called for his release following the news that he was held by Iranian authorities as he was leaving the country last week. His whereabouts are still unknown. The call came from the 2007-08 class of Nieman Fellows, of which Iason was a member.

♦ The US has seized the moment to restore its ambassador to Syria, Iran's main Arab ally, following a four-year gap. Barack Obama believes Syria is integral to Middle East peace efforts.