On Sunday, Muhammad Khatami becomes president of Iran, presenting the West with a chance to rethink its policy towards an awkward, important country in a part of the world that remains as this weeks bombs in Jerusalem show dangerously unstable.…

The West's hunt for an Iranian moderate has been a tragi-comic affair: remember the Reagan administrations woeful pursuit of that chimerical character in the mid-1980s…?

… Iran's president is number-two in the constitutional hierarchy, second to the spiritual leader, the conservative Ayatollah Ali Khamenei… If he is to achieve anything he must win the trust of mullahs and bazaaris whose outlook is often not his own.

The government he will announce on August 4th is likely to include the names of hard-liners that make the West wince: his team, after all, has to be approved by the right-wingers in Iran's parliament, the majlis…

The more immediate menace is Iran as sponsor of terrorism. An earnest of the new presidents good faith would be early evidence of his readiness to disentangle his government firmly from the late Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa ordering the murder of a British writer, Salman Rushdie.

Europeans should not offer their credit or technology to a regime that says the fatwa remains operative, and that blood-money will be paid to the murderer by a semi-official foundation, even though it will not actually send its own hit-men to do the dirty job.

Nor should the Iranian regime be allowed to get away with its dire treatment of domestic opponents and intellectual dissidents. In a better world, it would not torment them at home; by no means should it be allowed to pursue them, let alone kill them, in other people's countries.

Beneath all this a time-bomb is ticking. If the Americans come up with irrefutable evidence of Iranian complicity in the explosion in June 1996 that killed 19 American airmen in their barracks in Saudi Arabia, the voices calling for American-Iranian relations to be more normal will be silenced….

Iran Conservatives Send Khatami Warning Sign, Reuter, August 5

TEHRAN - Iran's influential conservatives are sending new President Mohammad Khatami warning signals ahead of expected friction over cabinet ministers.

Khatami, sworn in on Monday as Iran's fifth president since the 1979 Islamic revolution, has yet to present the conservative-dominated parliament his cabinet list for approval. By law he has to do so by August 18. Analysts and newspapers predict some controversial figures will be on the list…

The new head of the executive has yet to officially announce his ministers but hard-line newspapers have already started attacking likely candidates.

Among the targets is Ataollah Mohajerani who several newspapers said would take over the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance.

The culture ministry "is in fact the command headquarters against the enemy's cultural invasion and therefore it should not be taken over by cowards or those who do not hold a grudge against America in their hearts," the hard-line Jomhouri Eslami said in an editorial.

Iran Needs Better World Ties for Economic Boost, Reuter, August 5 

TEHRAN - Iran has to improve ties with the West to attract foreign capital essential for the success of President Mohammad Khatami's call for an economic revival, analysts said on Tuesday.

But they predicted tough resistance by hard-liners to speedy moves to open up to the West and much-needed foreign investment to tackle unemployment and inflation.

Inflation and unemployment are estimated by economists at double the official figures of 23 and 10 percent respectively…

Even if Khatami succeeded in solving sufficient problems with Western Europe to attract investments he would still face resistance from conservatives in parliament to any relaxation of the rules.

The hard-line newspaper Kayhan International said on Tuesday Khatami's call for detente did not include Iran's declared enemy the United States.

Iranian's Face to Be Burnt, Reuter, August 5

TEHRAN - An Iranian court ordered a man's face burnt with acid for staging an acid attack on a young girl whose father would not let them marry, a newspaper said on Tuesday…

Under Iran's Islamic laws of Qesas (Retribution) someone causing bodily harm can be punished by having a similar injury inflicted by judicial authorities.

The court also sentenced the youth who threw the acid to 15 years in jail and ordered him to pay damages while his accomplice received three years imprisonment and 10 years internal exile.

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