According to a confidential poll recently conducted by the Guidance Ministry's Center for Studying and Polling Public Opinion, only 3.3% of 2,000 people questioned in Tehran said they would take part in the elections.

The poll was conducted upon a request by the Interior Ministry which received the 60-page report.

On the basis of this poll, 42% of those questioned, stressed that they will not take part in the elections and 51.6% said they did not know whether they will take part in the elections or not.

Among those who said they will not vote, 9.3% said the reason is that they do not know who the candidates are, 6.3% said the election was a sham, 7% said they were dissatisfied with the officials, 3.7% cited lack of publicity, 3.7% said that the candidates were incompetent, 3% cited the absence of candidates from other factions, 4.4% pointed to the poor state of their finances, 2.3% cited personal reasons, 0.6% spoke of the lack of security and 0.2% said the propaganda by the enemy was the cause for their non-participation.

This poll demonstrates palpably that the Islamic Councils' election sham will be met with an decisive boycott of the near unanimous majority of people.

In previous radio-television messages to the Iranian people, Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, described boycotting the "Islamic Councils'" election farce as a patriotic duty.
 
 

Local Polls Thrown Into Chaos As Vote Nears, Associated Press, February 22

TEHRAN - A hard-line Iranian election board has disqualified 50 candidates from this week's local elections, state media reported Monday.

Most were rejected on grounds of having questionable loyalty to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, head of the hard-line faction in the Islamic government. Others were accused of "having suspect records from the past," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Although the number of disqualified candidates is small, most are well known figures, including former interior minister, Abdollah Nouri and student leader Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, newspapers reported.
 
 

Khatami Visits Controversial Nuclear Power Site, Agence France Presse, February 19

TEHRAN - President Mohammed Khatami has paid a visit to Iran's controversial Bushehr nuclear power plant and called for a faster completion of the site's initial construction phase.

Khatami said "more efforts" should be made to finish construction of the first stage "as soon as possible."

Washington is strongly opposed to Moscow's technological collaboration with Tehran, charging that it has resulted in the transfer of nuclear and missile technology.
 
 

Top Mullah Threatens Rushdie, Agence France Presse, February 19

TEHRAN - An Iranian prayer leader threatened British author Salman Rushdie on Friday and insisted that the "fatwa" ordering his death for blasphemy from Khomeini remained valid.

Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, addressing a Friday prayer gathering at Tehran university, said that Moslems "will never allow Salman Rushdie to live in security and safety."

Janati also reiterated that the fatwa, or death sentence, issued against Rushdie by the late leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, "remains valid no matter what anyone says."

The remarks by Janati came amid calls by influential members of Iran's Shiite Moslem clergy for the death sentence against Rushdie to be carried out.
 
 

Financing Search Delays Iran Caspian Pipeline Deal, Reuters, February 22

DUBAI - A deal to build a $347 million Caspian Sea oil pipeline through Iran has been delayed by a tough search for consortium partners who can deliver financing, an Iranian oil official said on Monday.

Iranian project management firm MAPNA was still seeking consortium partners in Europe and had not ruled out two state-owned Chinese companies to help construct the pipeline to Iran's northern refineries, the oil official told Reuters.

"MAPNA is meeting with many European companies and no decision has been made yet," said the official who requested anonymity.

MAPNA -- the Iran Power Plant Projects Management Co -- was the brainchild of Bijan Zanganeh, who was energy minister at the time it was created in 1993 and is now Iran's oil minister. It has connections in Iran's oil industry and business and government circles.

Back to Brief on Iran