- TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian clerics and politicians blasted President
Bush on Friday for his "axis of evil" comments against their
country and urged rival reformists and conservatives to close ranks against
the United States.
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- In a rare show of unity, Iranian politicians
from both camps took a break from long-running, bitter disputes to heap
scorn on Bush over his "arrogant" remarks.
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- "One of America's aims in raising
the recent accusations is to sow division among Iranian rulers," said
Hassan Rowhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's
top decision-making body on security and military issues.
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- "Bush raises these accusations at
a time of domestic tension in Iran. Maybe it sees it as a suitable opportunity.
There is nothing more important for us now than national unity," he
told Iran's student news agency ISNA.
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- Bush said on Tuesday that Iran, Iraq
and North Korea were trying to develop weapons of mass destruction and
singled them out as an "axis of evil." But he said that did not
mean abandonment of dialogue with Iran.
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- Since the 1997 election of reformist
President Mohammad Khatami, Iran has seen rising public demand for greater
freedom and democracy in the country, where supreme leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei controls the conservative-dominated judiciary and has the final
say on all matters of state.
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- Rowhani, a moderate conservative, was
defiant:
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- "Bush's accusations will have no
bearing on our policies. If America is out to scare Iran, our people and
officials are not afraid of these threats."
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- APPEAL FOR UNITY
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- During a Friday prayers sermon in the
northwestern city of Tabriz, Ayatollah Mohsen Mojtahed-Shabastari appealed
to political factions loyal to the Islamic republic to stop fighting each
other.
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- "The enemy will exploit these differences
of opinion and try to strike a blow to the Islamic system," Iran's
IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
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- Another influential cleric, Ayatollah
Ahmad Jannati, called Bush a "bloodthirsty maniac" in his own
sermon at the Tehran prayers.
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- "America thinks it can threaten
and attack other countries by making terrorism charges. He thinks he can
do what he did in Afghanistan to other countries," the hard-line ayatollah
said.
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- He was referring to the U.S.-led attacks
which drove the hard-line Islamic Taliban from power in Afghanistan, Iran's
eastern neighbor.
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- Even leading reformers denounced Bush,
but they held their rival conservatives to blame for "rising"
foreign threats.
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- Mohsen Armin, a leading parliamentarian,
said the conservative pressure on Khatami's reformist camp had "weakened
the Islamic republic's position in the world and risked losing the trust
of our own people."
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- "This has created the best opportunity
for America to revive its age-old animosity against Iran," he told
ISNA.
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