BRIEF ON IRAN, No. 222 Representative Office of The National Council of Resistance of Iran Wednesday, August 2, 1995 3421 M Street NW #1032, Washington, DC 20007 Iran Stops Critical Weekly, Reuters, July 31 NICOSIA - Iranian authorities have stopped the publication of a radical Islamic weekly known for exposing corruption in high places, a member of the magazine's staff said on Monday. "We have only received a copy of a fax sent by the authorities to our printing house telling them not to print our paper," a member of the staff of Payam-e Daneshjoo (Student's Message), who did not give his name, told Reuters by telephone from Tehran.... "We have not heard anything official yet, but I think they have stopped us for good this time and for the same reason as four months ago," he said. He was referring to a court ordering police in April to seize an issue of the paper for carrying accusations of corruption against the head of Iran's largest economic conglomerate. Payam-e Daneshjoo has published a series of articles suggesting that Mohsen Rafiqdoust, the head of the Bonyad-e Mostazafan va Janbazan (Foundation for the Deprived and War Disabled) may have been involved in a big bank fraud.... In June, the offices of the paper were attacked by a crowd apparently angry with its criticism of government officials. Payam-e Daneshjoo, published by active radical students, gained sudden popularity this year for directly attacking President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's economic policies and writing about economic hardship and financial corruption. In March, Iran banned a monthly literary magazine for publishing a poem deemed immoral. The radical Islamic daily Jahan-e Eslam was banned in February for affronting Islam and Iran's supreme leader. South Africa-U.S. Ties Strained over Iran, Cuba, Reuters, August 1 JOHANNESBURG - Post-apartheid South Africa's relations with Washington are under strain over an oil storage deal with Iran, improving ties with Cuba and a shipment of frozen chicken, officials and analysts said on Tuesday. The U.S. State Department has expressed disappointment over last month's deal between Pretoria and Tehran that will see millions of barrels of Iranian oil stored on the Cape west coast.... The United States has asked its trading partners not to trade with or invest in Iran, which it says supports terrorism and seeks weapons of mass destruction.... Iran Offers To Help Libya Counter UN Sanctions, Reuters, July 31 NICOSIA - Iran, itself trying to sidestep a U.S. trade ban, offered on Monday to help Libya cope with United Nations sanctions. The official news agency IRNA quoted Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying: "Iran is ready to offer every sort of help to Libya in order to help it cope with sanctions."... The U.N. Security Council, in a periodic review, on Friday left intact sanctions imposed in 1992 for Libya's refusal to hand over for trial two suspects indicted in the United States and Britain for allegedly planting a bomb which blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing 270 people. The United States, which accuses Iran of fostering terrorism and seeking to develop nuclear arms, in June imposed a trade and investment ban against it.... New Passports to Further Repression, Israeli radio, July 16 Interior Minister of the Islamic Republic, Ali Mohammad Besharati announced that the government's aim in issuing new passports in an expensive $10-million project is to combat and step up control of the movements of the regime's opponents. Women's Labor Conditions, Kayhan, July 12 Some 600 female workers have lost their lives in job accidents, over the past four years, revealed Nafiseh Fayazbakhsh, Majlis deputy, in an interview with Kayhan. She said women suffered more accidents at work. They had 39 accidents from March to June 1993, and 70 more accidents in the following eight months.