TEHRAN - Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Iranian women on Wednesday against embracing Western feminist ideas, saying it could promote sexual promiscuity in the Islamic republic.

"A blind imitation of Western women is noxious," Khamenei told tens of thousands of women gathered at a stadium here to celebrate Women's Week in Iran. "The feminist movement in the West has only brought sexual promiscuity."…

After the 1979 Islamic revolution, the Shiite Moslem clergy pressed for a more traditional role for the female population in the interest of stronger family and forced women to appear in public in the all-encompassing Islamic covering.

The feminist movement in Iran, after lying dormant for more than a decade, has experienced a resurgence, with many devout Moslems drawing on more progressive teachings of Islam to promote women's status….

But women are still barred from becoming a judge or president, and socially they face more restrictions than men….

Slow Tehran's Terrorism With an Oil Glut, Christen Science Monitor, Opinion/Essay, October 22 

Iranian officials have been complaining about lower-than-expected income since March because renewed Iraqi production has weakened international oil prices.

Iran has a foreign debt of some $20 billion. It needs $4 billion yearly for hard-currency debt service. In 1996 it had about $18 billion in oil revenues, 80 percent of total export earnings. With lower oil prices, 1997 revenues are substantially less. Iranians have seen nothing but decline standards and 35 percent inflation.

This suggests a way the US could deprive Iran of the oil billions it uses to export terror and build nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that would target Middle East allies like Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

By using the US's half-billion-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to help glut the oil market, oil prices could be driven way down…

Washington, could continue pushing the glut until Tehran verifiably terminates its missile and nuclear weapons programs and ends the export of terror….

Egypt believes that these goals can be achieved by cheap oil bringing the Islamic regime down.

Cairo is ready to sacrifice substantial oil income to end the terror-exporting Iranian regime.

Oil experts say that each dollar drop in the price of a barrel of crude oil represents a loss to Iran of $1 billion a year….

So Iran's economic lifeblood would be about $7 billion yearly. Thus cheap oil would vitally threaten Iran's economy. If Egypt is right, the long-suffering Iranians would send the clerical regime back to their mosques. Or supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could change his way.

Iran's Foreign Minister Calls Terrorism "Domestic Affairs!", Agence France Presse, October 22

TEHRAN - Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi on Wednesday blamed Germany for the diplomatic row between his country and the European Union and urged Bonn to revise its attitude.

"We hold Germany responsible for the present problems and the failure of all the efforts to solve them," Kharazi told Iran's official news agency IRNA.

"It was Germany which from the beginning of the crisis adopted a discriminatory attitude against the Islamic republic," he said. "We certainly do not let any country to interfere in our domestic affairs and make statements against Iran."…

Iran's Official Admits Consumer Prices Up 7.2 Percent in Latest Half Year, Reuter, October 21

TEHRAN - Consumer prices for the first half of the Iranian year which started on March 21 rose by an average of 7.2 percent, Iran's Central Bank said in a report published by a local newspaper on Tuesday.

The report in the daily Hamshahri said bread prices increased by 25.6 percent while dried cereals rose by 21.7 percent.

Dairy products' prices increased by an average of 18.7 percent, chicken by 16.6 percent and fresh fruits and eggs rose by 14.5 and 14.3 percent respectively, the report said….

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