Iranian President Mohammed Khatami warned there could be an explosion of popular anger if his conservative rivals keep trying to stifle his reform movement, newspapers reported Wednesday.
In a rare direct attack on conservatives, Khatami issued a ringing defense of his embattled reform movement amid widespread reports of a back-room campaign to sideline him ahead of next year's elections.
"Suppose we silence the critics, and their questions, for a while," Khatami told university students on Tuesday. "These people will remain dissatisfied, and no one will be able to prevent the resulting damage."
The president, who is expected to stand for re-election next year, blasted the anti-reform campaign which has seen the shuttering of papers and the arrest of journalists and popular reformist figures.
"Why do we have to forbid one way of thinking in order to defend another, and believe that with the removal of one person an entire way of thinking has been destroyed?" he said in an unusually emotional appeal.
"In order to ruin one person a great and destructive war is launched, in which everyone's energy is used up, until that individual is pushed from the scene," Khatami said.
The Tehran press has in recent weeks been rife with reports of an intense behind-the-scenes campaign to sideline the reformist president, but this was the first time he has publicly acknowledged the effort.
Iran's conservative courts have closed down every major pro-Khatami newspaper since reformists won February's parliamentary elections, ending a longtime conservative grip on the legislature.
Several high-profile journalists and newspaper chiefs have been arrested, while a tough verdict is expected in the closed-door trial of an outspoken pro-reform cleric, which reportedly ended on Saturday – TEHRAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
