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Despite widespread rigging, the clerical regime announced that only 274,000 people cast their ballots in the capital, Tehran. This figure is 5.8% of the official number of eligible voters announced for the capital last May.
Mr. Massoud Rajavi, the President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said: By staying away from the polls in this sham election, the Iranian people showed their rejection of the mullahs' illegitimate regime. They gave a resounding 'no' as a response to Khatami's hollow maneuvers.
Mr. Rajavi added: In the wake of popular uprisings, student demonstrations,
and workers' strikes across the country, the decisive boycott of the elections
unravels the myth of moderation of the clerical regime and its new president.
It leaves no justification for continuing relations with this religious,
terrorist dictatorship.
Tehran Population Largely Ignores By-Elections,
Agence France Presse, March 13
TEHRAN - Tehran's population largely ignored legislative by-elections
held here and in three other cities on Friday to elect five parliamentary
deputies, with many polling stations vacant for much of
the day.
Visits to a dozen major polling stations in the afternoon showed just 200 to 300 voters casting ballots there, in sharp contrast to long queues during the presidential elections in May.
Nearly half of those who had signed up to run for the polls were rejected
by the Council of the Guardians, a constitutional
watchdog dominated by conservatives.
Conservatives Ahead in Iran Parliament By-Election,
Reuter, March 14
TEHRAN - Conservative opponents of President Mohammad Khatami appeared
to have made gains in parliamentary by-elections, according to results
announced on Saturday.
The polls were the first electoral contest between Iran's factions since
Khatami quashed conservative candidates in
presidential elections last year.
The by-election would not change the balance of forces in the parliament
in which the conservatives have a majority, but analysts viewed it as a
litmus test for Khatami's popular backing in the face of conservative opponents
who still control many state bodies.
Khatami: "Structure Of Our Economy Is Sick",
Agence France Presse, March 13
EHRAN - President Mohammad Khatami said Sunday Iran's economy was suffering
from grave structural problems exacerbated by tumbling oil.
"The structure of our economy is sick -- whether in production, distribution
or regulations," said Khatami.
Iran's economy is in recession, starved for many years of foreign
investment and now facing a collapse in world oil prices.
The government had forecast to earn 16 dollars from the sale of each barrel of crude during the next Iranian year starting March 21, but oil revenues have collapsed as the world price has slumped below 13 dollars per barrel.
Khatami also complained about the official inflation rate of 23 percent and unemployment rate of 9.5 percent, saying they "are a sign of illness."
The growth rate has also plunged from more than five percent in early
1990s to around three percent and the country faces a budget deficit of
two billion dollars.
U.S. Action Stymied China Sale to Iran,
The Washington Post, March 13
Weeks after winning a Chinese pledge to halt assistance to Iran's nuclear
programs, the Clinton administration discovered and protested secret negotiations
between the two governments for hundreds of tons of material used in enriching
uranium to weapons grade, according to officials with access to U.S. intelligence.
... Administration officials said they now are confident that the China Nuclear Energy Industry Corp. in Beijing will not deliver the chemical at issue, anhydrous hydrogen fluoride (AHF), to the Isfahan Nuclear Research Center in central Iran, a principal site of Iranian efforts to manufacture the explosive core of an atomic device.
... according to sources, the National Security Agency intercepted at
least two communications between a senior Iranian
official in Isfahan and mid-level Chinese counterparts in Beijing.
Initiated by Iran, the negotiations involved millions of dollars worth of AHF, enough to provide what one official called "a lifelong supply" for a planned facility to convert naturally occurring uranium to the highly enriched form required for nuclear weapons.
Especially disturbing to some U.S. analysts, the talks included references to a cover story and to falsified "end user" documents to conceal the fact that the purchaser would be one of Iran's premier nuclear institutes...
[According to a report by AFP, Iran on Sunday denied that China had
ended its nuclear cooperation with the Islamic republic.]