An Iranian reformist parliament member on Sunday accused the country's power-wielding conservatives of using US threats against Iran as a pretext to "suppress" President Mohammad Khatami's pro-reform camp.
"Those who have bellicose ideas, seek to use US threats as a pretext to create a situation of exception, of emergency, to suppress the government, parliament and press," Behzad Nabavi, the secretary general of the Islamic Revolution Mujahedin Organization, told parliament.
Without specifically naming them, Nabavi said the conservatives "were dragging the country into war," and accused them of "wanting to show Iran to the world as a bellicose country supporting terrorism, a country of the axis of evil."
Nabavi, whose party is an important part of the pro-Khatami majority in parliament, was referring to the US administration's description of Iran as forming part of an "axis of evil", along with Iraq and North Korea.
Meanwhile, in a separate statement Sunday, Nabavi's party stressed the United States' "superiority" and warned that "approving a military confrontation when there is an alternative would go against the defense of our independence and territorial sovereignty."
Iran's rival camps have been divided over a possible resumption of contacts with Washington, more than two decades after the two countries broke off relations, according to AFP.
The conservative-dominated judiciary had recently provoked the reformists' anger when it ruled that simply supporting the idea of talks with the United States in the press was a criminal offense. (albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
