Iran's supreme leader quashes press reform bid

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday abruptly ended a bid by parliament to ease restrictions on the press -- one of the pro-reform majority's central campaign promises.

Deputies had scheduled a debate and vote on amendments to a draconian press law passed in the last days of the outgoing, conservative legislature. Passage was virtually assured.

	MESSAGE BOARD
Reforms in Iran

But the last-minute intervention of Khamenei, who has final say in key matters of state, forced an indefinite suspension of the matter amid shouted protests and even scuffles on the floor of the chamber.

"If the enemies infiltrate our press, this will be a big danger to the country's security and the people's religious beliefs. I do not deem it right to keep silent," the leader said in a letter to parliament.

"The present press law has succeeded to a point to prevent this big plague. The (proposed) bill is not legitimate and in the interests of the system and the revolution."

Pro-reform deputies used the start of the open session to force the leadership to read the letter into the public record. Earlier, some walked out of the parliament in protest.

Speaker Mehdi Karroubi, a veteran revolutionary cleric who was appointed in a compromise vote over the wishes of more militant reformers, said deputies had no choice but to submit to Khamenei's will.

"Our constitution has the elements of the absolute rule of the supreme clerical leader and you all know this and approve of this. We are all duty-bound to abide by it."

SCUFFLES AND A WALK-OUT

A number of reformist deputies briefly left the hall in protest that the decision to drop the bill was not put to a vote.

"The presiding board made the decision out of the blue, regardless of parliament's by-laws," said Ali Tajernia, a deputy from the northeast province of Mashhad.

"The decision to postpone the motion should have been put to a vote."

The decision to kill the bill provoked a storm of criticism on the floor, forcing the speaker to turn off the microphones and to issue repeated demands for order. Some deputies pushed and shoved each other before being ushered outside by colleagues.

Mohammad Reza Khatami, the head of the biggest pro-reform faction and brother of the president, said parliament's presiding board would now consider its next move.

"Parliament regulations do not predict what we will do in such circumstances...but we will take it up with the presiding board to decide what to do," he told reporters.

Parliament officials then expelled journalists and confiscated film and videotape in an apparent effort to limit coverage of the uproar.

Earlier Karroubi, under extreme pressure from a pro-reform bloc that has made the press law the centre of its legislative agenda, reluctantly agreed to allow the letter to be read in public.

"We cannot keep it secret from the people. They are not outsiders," one pro-reform deputy told Karroubi before a member of the presiding board read out the text.

PRESS REVOLUTION AT CROSSROADS

In the absence of true political parties and other elements of a civil society, Iran's press has emerged as the central battleground between reformers grouped around President Mohammad Khatami and conservatives in the Islamic clerical establishment.

The election in 1997 of Khatami, a mid-ranking cleric and a former newspaper man, touched off a proliferation of independent newspapers that subjected almost every aspect of Iranian society to commentary and criticism.

But the conservatives have successfully counter-attacked, using their control of the judiciary, the security forces and other levers of power to muzzle the press revolution.

In April, hardline courts banned without trial all of the leading pro-reform newspapers after the leader said they had become "bases for the enemy." A number of leading journalists and publishers have also been jailed.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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