Back to Brief on Iran
TEHRAN - Iran's parliamentary speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri pledged on Monday that his country would continue to oppose the Middle East peace process.
Nateq-Nuri, leader of Iran's conservative faction, told visiting Lebanese Shiite Moslem leader Mohammed Mehdi Shamseddin that Iran "will continue the strategy of Imam (Ruhollah) Khomeini," founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
"This strategy is unchangeable because it has roots in the Qoran and the fundamentals of our beliefs," he said in talks with Shamseddin, head of the Higher Lebanese Shiite Council.
"Today all Moslem countries understand and appreciate our stand against the peace process and know that it is of no interest to the Palestinians," he said, quoted by the official Iranian news agency IRNA.
Shamseddin, who arrived on Wednesday, praised Iran for opposing peace between Arabs and Israel.
"At a time when all countries seek peace with Israel, the Islamic republic is resisting it with all its power. This has played an effective role to boost the morale of the Lebanese people and strengthen their position," he said.
Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said Friday that his country had "paid a heavy price" for its opposition to the peace process, but vowed that it will be continued.
Low Oil Price, Factionalism Delay Kahatmi's Announcement, Reuter, July 20
TEHRAN - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, caught between domestic factionalism and depressed world oil prices, has been forced to postpone a planned overhaul of the country's economy, analysts say.
On the table are rival proposals from competing wings of the government.
"I think he has realized that there are a lot of contradictions in the various drafts," said Fariborz Raisdana, an independent economist who took part in the original policy review.
"Now he is trying to combine them. Possibly he will end up with 'Russian salad' and not an economic agenda," Raisdana said.
Iran's command economy is almost completely dominated by state enterprises and heavily reliant on oil exports. In fact, petrodollars account for about 80 percent of hard currency earnings and up to 40 percent of state revenue.
Oil prices are hovering around 10-year lows and already the government has slashed its revenue estimates, reducing to $12 from $16 the amount it expects from each of the roughly 2.2 million barrels of crude it exports each day. Even this figure, say analysts, may prove optimistic.
Hostage Taker Heads Iran's Office in Syria, Reuter, July 20
DAMASCUS - Hossein Sheikholeslam, one of the Iranian students who held hostages at the United States embassy in Tehran after the Islamic revolution of 1979, arrived in Damascus on Monday as his country's new ambassador to Syria.
Now 44, Sheikholeslam studied computer science in the United States before the revolution and has since served more than 10 years as Iran's deputy foreign minister.
Syrian approval for the nomination, a process which sometimes takes six months, was in Sheikholeslam's case completed in barely two weeks, an Iranian source said.
Iran on Trades Union Global Blacklist, Reuter, July 20
BRUSSELS - The International Free Trades Union Confederation on Friday named and shamed close to two dozen countries for failing to respect trades union rights during the last four years.
The Brussels-based CISL, upholding workers' rights to set up trades unions enshrined in a 1993 International Labor Organization convention, named countries from around the world for murder, torture, police beatings, arrests and total bans on unions struggling to win their members a better deal.
The CISL pinpointed beatings, the use of mercenaries to break union power, repressive or restrictive legislation and spying on activists.
The confederation singled out six countries each from Africa, Australasia, the Americas and Europe, and eight from the Middle East for non-respect of union rights.
Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria headed
the list in the Middle East, followed by Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, the United
Arab Emirates and Lebanon.