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Khamenei invites election challenge, Mousavi to speak at march

Article published on the 2009-06-15 Latest update 2009-06-15 10:19 TU

Iranian expatriates protesting in Dubai, 15 June 2009(Photo: Reuters)

Iranian expatriates protesting in Dubai, 15 June 2009
(Photo: Reuters)

Iranian state media reported Monday that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei invited opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi to pursue complaints that Friday's election was rigged in favor of incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mousavi's campaign website said that he would appear on Monday at a planned opposition march in Tehran, and would call for calm.

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Ahmadinejad cancelled a trip planned on Monday to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Russia, where he was to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, an Iranian source told the news agency AFP. The reason, the source said, was that Ahmadinejad was waiting for the dispute to die down over what his government says was a free and fair election victory.

Also, the Iranian authorities have suspended the newspaper owned by Mousavi, another reformist newspaper reported on Monday. Kalameh Sabz (Green Word) was nowhere to be found on Tehran newsstands on Monday.

Meanwhile, speaking in Le Bourget, France, Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak called Ahmadinejad's claimed victory "bad news".

"The triumph of the extremists is bad news, as any kind of victory of extremists should be defined," Barak told journalists at the Paris Air Show."I'm not sure if the results reflect the real will of the Iranian people," he added.