TEHRAN - Iranian police arrested dozens of people amid two days of unrest following the decision of a conservative council to overturn the election of several reformists, state television said Saturday.

Meanwhile press reports said a top pro-Khatami figure had been arrested and another summoned to court as conservatives showed signs of fighting back after the pro-Khatami camp's victory in February's parliamentary polls.

The television report said 40 people had been jailed in the northwestern city of Khalkhal after angry residents went on the rampage late Thursday, ransacking government offices and setting fire to vehicles.

The protest erupted after the conservative-led Council of Guardians overturned results from city voting booths in the February 18 election, taking away the victory of a reform candidate and handing it to his right-wing rival.

In a statement received in Nicosia on Friday, the opposition People's Mujahedeen said more than 5,000 people took part in the unrest, occupying the local governor's office and smashing government offices.

Demonstrators also inflicted "heavy damage" to banks and vehicles belonging to the elite Revolutionary Guards, and dozens of protesters were wounded in clashes with security forces, the group said.

The unrest was followed Friday by a protest of some 500 people in the industrial and agricultural hub of Damavand, just northeast of the capital, the official IRNA news agency reported.

That protest also broke out after the council overturned the election victory of a reformer in the district following a complaint from losing incumbent Ahmad Rassuli-Nejad, an influential conservative MP.

The Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF) suffered another blow as papers said Saturday that an IIPF official had been arrested.
 

Top Cleric Blasts U.S. Over Arrested Jews, Reuters, April 7

TEHRAN - A senior Iranian cleric blasted the United States on Friday for voicing concern over 13 Jews arrested in Iran on spying charges, saying Washington was trying to win the release of "enemies of Moslems."

"These people are spies who have served your interests, they are Jews and are...by nature enemies of Moslems. But you (Americans) want us to free them," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a leading hardliner, said in a sermon carried on state radio.

"Who said our problem with you is one of import-exports?...The problem is the American government's animosity towards the Iranian people," Jannati said.
 

Defense Secretary Says Iran Must Stop Backing "Terrorism", Reuters, April 8

MANAMA - U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said on Saturday Iran must stop backing "terrorism" and halt its opposition to the Middle East peace process if it wants better ties with Washington.

When asked about the warming relations between non-Arab Iran and oil power and U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, Cohen said it was up to individual nations to set their own foreign policy.

"But each country must be very careful in dealing with Iran to make sure they can satisfy themselves that Iran wants a peaceful, stable relationship with them," he said.
 

Khatami Said to Be Planning Cabinet Reshuffle, Agence France Presse, April 9

TEHRAN - Mohammad Khatami will be reshuffling his government in the next few days, one of his ministers announced here on Sunday, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.

Sources have suggested at least four ministers are due to be replaced, including Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi.
 

Elite Revolutionary Guard Dead, Agence France Presse, April 8

TEHRAN - A colonel in Revolutionary Guards who was a veteran of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq has been assassinated near Tehran, a newspaper reported here Saturday.

The body of Hossein Bourbour, who suddenly left home last week after receiving a mysterious phone call, was found outside the capital after police got an anonymous tip-off, the Abrar paper said.

It said Bourbour showed signs of having been tortured before the killing.

Bourbour served some nearly seven years on the front line during the Iraq war and was wounded several times.

[Associated Press: The (Tehran) radio said that Bourbour was a supporter of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who leads a hard-line faction that opposes Mohammad Khatami.

["Bourbour, a real supporter of the authority of the supreme leader ... was found martyred blindfolded and handcuffed, and with signs of torture on his body,'' the radio quoted the IRGC statement as saying.]

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