Key religious group in Iran defies supreme leader

Last update: July 4, 2009 - 10:37 PM

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The most important group of religious leaders in Iran has called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate, an act of defiance against the country's supreme leader and a public sign of a major split in the country's clerical establishment.

The statement Saturday by the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult.

Since the election, the bulk of the clerical establishment in the holy city of Qum, an important religious and political center of power, has remained largely silent. With its statement on Saturday, the association of clerics came down squarely on the side of the reform movement.

Mousavi released documents Saturday detailing a campaign of alleged fraud by supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that assured his reelection, while an adviser to Iran's supreme leader accused Mousavi of treason.

Hossein Shariatmadari, an adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused Mousavi of being a foreign agent working for the United States in an editorial Saturday in the conservative newspaper Khayan.

Also Saturday, the lawyer for a detained Iranian employee of the British Embassy said the worker has been charged with harming Iran's national security, a step certain to increase tension with Europe.

Myanmar: U.N. leader comes up empty

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ended a mission to Myanmar on Saturday saying he was "deeply disappointed" that the isolated nation's top military ruler denied him a visit to jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

In two days of rare talks with Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the U.N. chief urged the reclusive 76-year-old autocrat to release Suu Kyi and other political prisoners and embark on democratic reforms ahead of elections scheduled for next year.

But their meetings Friday and Saturday in Naypyitaw, the junta's remote administrative capital, left Ban saying that his diplomatic gambit had produced no immediate results and amounted to "a setback to the international community's efforts to provide a helping hand to Myanmar."

Suu Kyi has been detained by the ruling generals for nearly 14 of the past 20 years and is now on trial charged with violating her house arrest. The 64-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate faces five years in prison if convicted in a trial that has sparked global outrage.

Still, the world's top diplomat disputed the notion he was returning empty-handed. He suggested that the trip may have planted seeds of reform that could blossom later.

N. KOREA: 7 MISSILES ARE FIRED INTO SEA

North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles into the sea on Saturday, flouting a U.N. Security Council resolution and sending a message of defiance to the United States on its Independence Day holiday.

South Korea, Japan and the United States condemned a barrage of short-range missiles. Russia and China called for calm.

North Korea has a record of timing missile tests to coincide with July 4; the tests on Saturday constituted the North's biggest one-day missile barrage since it launched seven missiles on July 4, 2006.

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