BRIEF ON IRAN	 
Representative Office of 
No. 568	
Wednesday, January 8, 1997 

The National Council of Resistance of Iran	
Washington, DC 20007


Italian's Meeting with Mullahs' Minister 
Condemned, Reuters, January 7  
 
	Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini 
met his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Velayati 
for talks on Tuesday.... 
	Europe's position ["critical dialogue" 
with Tehran] contrasts with that of the United 
States, which has urged the international 
community to isolate Iran... 
	Dini said Italian firms also had a strong 
interest in Iran, an important energy supplier for 
Italy. 
	The meeting was hotly criticized by 
Iranian anti-government groups. "To shake the 
hand of an official representative of the clerical-
terrorist dictatorship which dominates Iran 
contradicts the fundamental principles of human 
rights," the National Council of Iranian 
Resistance said in a statement. 
	An Iranian human rights group, the 
Comitato Mohammad Hossein Naghdi, also 
condemned Italy for hosting what it termed "the 
representative of a state which has made terror 
and terrorism its raison d'etre." 
 
 
Iran Hangs Three More, Reuters, January 7 
 
	Iran has executed three men..., a 
newspaper said on Tuesday. The daily Iran said 
the men, sentenced to death..., were hanged in 
Tehran's Qasr prison on Monday. It did not give 
details of the cases.... 
 
 
Group Accuses Iran of Abuses, The Associated 
Press, January 7 
 
	The number of executions in Iran more 
than doubled last year and many of the death 
sentences were carried out after unfair trials, 
Amnesty International said Tuesday. 
	The London-headquartered human 
rights group said it recorded at least 110 
executions in Iran in 1996, compared with 50 in 
1995. 
	"The true figure may be much higher," it 
said, because "many executions are never 
reported." 
	In a statement faxed to The Associated 
Press in Cairo, Egypt, the group said detainees 
were sometimes tortured.... 
	Amnesty said the most recent victims of 
the Iranian judicial system -- Hedayatollah 
Zendehdel and Abolghasem Majd-Abkahi -- were 
detained for seven years before being tried and 
were "executed mainly on political charges." 
	It said the two were believed hanged in 
Qasr Prison in Tehran on Dec. 29 or Jan. 1. They 
had been convicted in July of being "corrupt on 
earth," the statement said.... 
	They said Majd-Abkahi's wife, Sayda 
Khoramzadeh Esfahani, was sentenced to death 
in a separate trial and "is believed to be at 
imminent risk of execution." 
 
 
Iran Says Nuclear Power Plant on Stream in 3 
Years, Reuters, January 7 
 
	A nuclear power station in the southern 
Iranian port of Bushehr will come on stream in 
three years, an official was on Tuesday quoted as 
saying. 
	"The Atomic power plant of Bushehr is 
scheduled to be ready for operation by the next 
three years in cooperation with Russia," Reza 
Amrollahi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy 
Organization, said in remarks carried by the 
Tehran Times newspaper.... 
	Russia has signed an $800 million deal 
with Iran to complete the plant despite U.S. 
objections that Tehran might use the technology 
to develop nuclear arms.... 
 
 
Sale of Military-Grade Uranium by Georgia, Iran 
Zamin News Agency, January 7 
 
	Georgian officials are announcing the 
availability of their highly enriched uranium, left 
there since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, 
for sale, as long as the radioactive material is not 
used for military purposes. 
	On Tuesday, the Associated Press quoted 
William Potter, a nuclear expert at California's 
Monterey Institute of International Studies, as 
saying that despite Gergia's conditions, the 
enriched uranium "could be used for weapons 
production." 
	There have been some reports indicating 
that Iran has offered a proposal to Georgian 
officials for purchasing the military-grade 
uranium. 
 
 
Iran MPs Give Province Status To 1994 Riot 
City, Reuters, January 1 
 
	Iran's parliament on Wednesday agreed 
to raise the city of Qazvin to the status of a 
province, reversing a 1994 vote that led to major 
riots in the industrial center, Iranian media 
said.... 
	Qazvin, with a population of 750,000, is 
a main industrial city and lies on the highway 
from the Turkish and Azerbaijani borders to 
Tehran used for overland imports....