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PARIS - Iranian exiles said they demonstrated outside French embassies in 24 cities around the world on Thursday to protest against a French government invitation to Iran's President Mohammad Khatami.
In Paris, a protest took place outside the headquarters of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, where Khatami is expected to attend the agency's general assembly at the end of this month.
Business sources have said the visit could take place on October 26-27.
Tehran snubbed the invitation last April after Paris turned down its request that no wine be served at the banquet because of the Moslem ban on alcohol. Non-alcoholic drinks were also to be served.
Witnesses said exiled Iranians protested loudly but peacefully outside the French embassy in Denmark in protest against the planned visit.
"It is spitting in the face of the Iranian people," Perviz Khazai, the Nordic representative of the Iranian National Resistance Council, told Reuters.
He said similar demonstrations were
being staged on Thursday outside French embassies in 24 countries in Europe,
the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
Iranians in Washington Demand Cancellation of Khatami's France Trip, Iran Zamin News Agency, October 7
Iranians supporters of the resistance residing in Washington, DC, staged a demonstration in front of the French Embassy to protest Khatami's planned trip to France.
The Iranian demonstrators demanded that the French cancel Khatami's planned trip to that country. They chanted "Down with Khamanei, Down with Khatami, Hail to Rajavi", and "Cancel Khatami's Trip."
The demonstration ended with a resolution which was handed over to the French embassy authorities. It stated that the French invitation to the clerical regime's president to visit France "runs counter to the highest interests of the Iranian people and makes a mockery of recognized human rights principles and France's democratic traditions."
The resolution further stated that
"We demand that the French government cancel Khatami’s planned trip to
France and not allow the president of a religious dictatorship responsible
for more than 120,000 political executions take advantage of such diplomatic
visits to legitimize its rule."
Mullahs’ Regime Direct Arms Shipments for Hezbollah, Agence France Presse, October 7
JERUSALEM - Iran is airlifting arms to the Lebanese fundamentalist guerrilla movement Hezbollah directly to Beirut rather than via Damascus in an apparent change of strategy, an Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday.
The Yediot Aharonot said shipments of Katyusha rockets, mortar shells and other weapons were landing directly in Beirut airport rather than being flown to Damascus and then transported by truck to the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah.
It said Iran and Hezbollah, which is
fighting Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon, had been seeking the establishment
of a direct line in case Syria returned to the negotiating table with the
Jewish state and wanted to stock up "for a rainy day."
MPs Slam Khatami’s Economic Plan, Reuters, October 5
TEHRAN - Iranian parliament deputies on Tuesday poured cold water on the government's ambitious $112 billion development plan, saying it was too general and lacked concrete answers for Iran's economic ills.
State media said the conservative-led assembly held a closed session to review the five-year plan, which aims to boost annual growth to six percent from the current 1.6 percent, fight high unemployment and trim the bloated state sector.
Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, a member of parliament's presiding board, said deputies criticized the plan proposed by Mohammad Khatami as "a set of laws and proposals which not only apply to the program's five years, but was just as relevant to other years and other fields," state radio said.
"The plan only gives a figure for the cut in the rate of unemployment and does not include ways of reducing joblessness and increasing investment," the radio quoted Nobakht as saying.
State television said deputies also questioned several other areas of the plan, due to start in March 2000, including foreign exchange rates where the government has proposed to partially float the Iranian rial.
Nobakht also said deputies were not satisfied with the government's proposed cultural and political reform programs: "In the proposed plan...not enough attention has been paid to culture and no limit has been set on political development."