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BAGHDAD - The Mujahideen Khalq Iranian opposition said on Sunday that Iranian agents had tried to blow up a bus carrying a number of its members on a road north of Baghdad.
"The bomb had been placed in a white Datsun pickup parked near the entrance to the city of Khalis 60 km (36 miles) north of Baghdad and was detonated by remote control when the Mujahideen bus was passing by," it said.
The Mujahideen said the attack was the 66th "terrorist and military" operation by Iran since 1993 against their bases inside Iraq.
In August the group said a bomb had exploded near their headquarters in Baghdad, killing three Iraqis and seriously wounding 11 others.
Mujahideen bases have been the target of air and rocket attacks by Iran. Their office in Baghdad, ringed by a concrete wall, has survived several mortar and bomb attacks.
Khatami Reaffirms His Alliance With Absolute Jurisprudence Despite Disqualification of Supporters, Agence France Presse, October 17
TEHRAN - President Mohammad Khatami Saturday criticized the disqualification of many of his supporters from standing in this week's key vote for Iran's Assembly of Experts, but opposed calls for a boycott of the poll.
Only 167 of the 396 hopefuls who signed up for Friday's vote have been cleared to stand.
Voters will elect 86 representatives to the assembly, a backbone of Iran's theocracy responsible for appointing or dismissing the country's "Vali-e-Faqih," or supreme leader, a position currently held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iranian electoral law requires candidates to be famously religious and to have a high level of proficiency in religious matters.
Several supporters of Khatami have pulled out of the election in protest at the exclusion of their allies from the race, and at least two organizations have refused to field any candidates.
But Khatami distanced himself from the boycott calls urging an "enthusiastic presence of the people" and calling on rival factions not to seek to "settle political accounts."
"Velayat-e-Faqih is the pillar of the regime and a blatant symbol of both democratic and Islamic aspects of the regime," said Khatami, who is Iran's second most important leader after Khamenei.
He said it was "necessary" for Iran's supreme leader to have the wide-ranging powers which the Islamic Republic's constitution grants him including control of the armed forces and the judiciary, and supervision of macro-economic and political policy.
"A supreme power and a final say on matters is a necessity for the stability of a government. It will help shape political and social order," the president said.
Would-Be Assassin's Mural Unveiled in Tehran, Associated Press, October 16
TEHRAN - Iranian demonstrators protested government efforts to distance itself from the death edict for Salman Rushdie, vowing Friday to kill the British author and publishers of "The Satanic Verses."
About 1,000 protesters cheered while rally organizers unveiled a three-story portrait of an alleged would-be assassin of Rushdie that was painted on an apartment building in a northern suburb of Tehran.
A man in a wheelchair took the podium and delivered a message to Rushdie in English: "I want to have a dialogue with you -- with a machine gun."
The mural -- the size of a basketball court -- showed Khomeini and Mustapha Mazeh, who died in 1989 in a London hotel while working on a homemade bomb.
The demonstrators also vowed to kill the staff of Viking-Penguin, which originally published "The Satanic Verses."
Villagers! Set New Bounty on Rushdie, Reuter, October 18
TEHRAN - Residents of a village in northern Iran have set a new bounty, including farmlands, fruit gardens, a house and carpets, on the head of the British author Salman Rushdie, a national newspaper reported on Sunday.
"The residents of Kiyapay village...will give 4,500 square meters of farmland, 1,500 square meters of fruit gardens, a house and 10 carpets, as a reward for carrying out the execution sentence against the author of the blasphemous book The Satanic Verses," a village official told the hardline daily newspaper Kayhan.
The villagers have also opened a bank account to gather donations by the 2,000 members of their village near the Caspian coast, Kayhan quoted him as saying.