Summary of Iran Stories in Today&apos;s BroadcastsBehnam NateghiThursday, February 19, 2004 <b>Candidates End Campaigning A Day before the Majles Elections</b> • As of eight o&apos;clock this morning, the 5,500 candidates running in Friday&apos;s Majles elections had to stop their campaigns to comply with the election law, according to the interior ministry. In the past six days, more than 4 tons of discarded election posters and brochures were collected from the city streets by sanitation workers, Tehran municipal government said. However, the amount of advertising has no correlation with the people&apos;s interest in the elections, even though, as the Supreme Leader says, Friday&apos;s elections are the most important in the 25-year history of the Islamic Republic. For that reason, the state-run radio-TV monopoly has mounted an unprecedented campaign in order to promote voter turnout. (Bahman Bastani) • The state-run radio-TV monopoly aired the communiqués from various right-wing political groups urging people to vote. The list included a splinter pro-conservative faction of the association of Islamic student councils, which calls itself by the same name as the main group Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat, which has boycotted the elections. The Dafter does not believe that the Friday elections promote democracy, member of the Daftar&apos;s central committee <b>Mehdi Aminizadeh</b> tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. (Leyli Sadr) • The former chief of the Tehran police&apos;s special units Farhad Nazari, who had been put on trial for organizing the police attack on the Tehran university student dorms in 1998, is the frontrunner in the Khorramabad elections, a Khorramabad, Kurdistan, resident tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. Most of Khorramabad residents see the elections not as a political competition but as a tribal race, and will participate to vote along tribal and ethnic affiliations, he adds. (Ali Sajjadi) • The elections&apos; atmosphere is quite lively in the city of Yasuj, center of the Kohkiloyeh-va-Boveyer-Ahmad province, due to tribal competitions, a Yasuj resident tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. (Masoud Malek) • In the campaign to win the people&apos;s hearts, the reformists, banned from running in the elections, are the true winners, writes reformist Tehran daily <i>Aftab-e Yazd</i>. The events of the past few months were the work of a few politicians who played with people&apos;s feelings, and turned the Majles into a bastion of political intrigue, the Supreme Leader&apos;s daily <i>Jumhuri-ye Eslami</i> writes. (Ali Sajjadi) • More than 1,000 Islamic student activists called for the boycott of the Friday elections in a statement partially listing the Islamic regime&apos;s 25-year scorecard: spread of poverty, prostitution, corruption, income gap, chronic lack of hope in the future, brain drain, human rights violations and political deadlock. (Bahman Bastani) • The turnout in the Friday elections is expected to be less than 35 percent, because the main reformist parties and the association of the Islamic student councils have boycotted the elections, Tehran University&apos;s political science professor <b>Davood Hermidas-Bavand</b> tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. The Guardians Council&apos;s mass disqualification of the candidacy applicants imposed a form of political apartheid on the country, he adds. (Leyli Sadr) • To register for the universities&apos; entrance exams, high school grads would have to show IDs with election stamps on them, according to a rumor which has young people worried that not voting on Friday may cost them access to higher education. Also, according to another rumor, the people who&apos;s IDs have not been stamped in the elections, will be denied the coupons that enable them to purchase food and other necessities at subsidized prices. Such rumors have no base in reality, and by law, no one can be denied services or coupons because he/she did not vote in the elections, Tehran-based lawyer <b>Ahmad Bashiri</b> tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. Voting in the elections is a personal choice, not an obligation, he adds. A student calling <b>Radio Farda</b>&apos;s election hotline from Isfahan suggests that those who fear such rumors, can register to vote and not vote. The number of the votes dropped in the ballot boxes are tallied, not the number of those who registered to vote, he says. (Farin Asemi) • A group of journalists working for conservative newspapers published a letter urging the people to vote in the Friday elections. (Keyvan Hosseini) • The conservative newspapers disputed the interior ministry&apos;s statement which put the number of eligible voters at 47 million. The reformists charge that the conservatives plan to announce fake figures to exaggerate voter turnout in the Friday elections. (Keyvan Hosseini) • Conservative candidate Mohammad-Reza Bahonar, possibly the next Majles speaker, said the conservative faction sees no problem in renewing the US-Iran relations. In an interview with the AFP&apos;s Tehran correspondent, Bahonar also said in dealing with such issues as women&apos;s dress, the conservatives will be pragmatic. (Shahran Tabari, London) • The developments of the past 25-years have had the positive impact of gradually eliminating the gap between the secular and religious intellectuals, Syracuse University professor <b>Mehrzad Boroujerdi</b>, author of a key research on the Iranian intellectuals&apos; attitudes towards the west, tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. The Guardians Council&apos;s bans on the reformists divided the reformist camp, and new alliances are being forged between secular and religious intellectuals, and between activists inside and outside the country, working towards common goals. The people are now more politically mature to know the difference between democratic and dictated elections, the elections in which they should participate and the elections from which they have to stay away, he adds. (Behnam Nateghi) • Disqualified candidacy applicant from the Kurdish town of Bukan <b>Mahmoud Dadkhah</b> tells <b>Radio Farda</b> that he will not vote in the elections, because the Guardians Council has violated his right to be elected. (Jean Khakzad) • In their election campaign literature, the conservative technocrats&apos; coalition Abadgaran speak of economic reconstruction and jobs, and avoid any mention of “Islamic values,” <i>Frankfurter Allgemeine</i> writes, adding that Abadgaran&apos;s leading candidate, Gholamali Haddad-Adel, a relative of the Supreme Leader, is poised to become the next Majles speaker. (Shahram Mirian, Cologne) • After the elections, when the conservatives take over the Majles, they will have to follow one of the two options, they would either respond to the people&apos;s demands, or resist the people: either way the Islamic Republic is doomed, Paris-based veteran journalist <b>Safa Haeri</b> tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. The conservative Guardians Council&apos;s main motive for banning the reformists from running in the elections was to prepare the grounds for the negotiations with the US, a move which has been approved in advance by the Supreme Leader, he adds. (Mir-Ali Hosseini, Paris) • President Khatami is a chess player left with only a few useless pawns, set to lose one more pawn in the Friday elections, Berlin daily <i>Die Tageszeitung</i> writes. The future Majles will have no legitimacy, due to the expected low voter turnout, Vienna daily <i>Die Presse</i> writes. (Parviz Farhang, Cologne) • The results of the Friday elections cannot be acceptable if the elections are not free and fair, Bundestag member <b>Michael Hartmann</b> tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. (Shahram Mirian, Cologne) • A US Senate resolution introduced by Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and sponsored by Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia) states that the Friday elections are “neither free nor fair” and are “fatally flawed.” (Maryam Ahmadi) <b>Judiciary Shuts Down Two Reformist Dailies</b> • The Tehran prosecutor closed two top reformist dailies, <i>Shargh</i>, organ of the moderate reformist party executives of construction (Kargozaran-e Sazandegi) and <i>Yaas-e Now</i>, the unofficial organ of the reformist party the Participation Front, for printing the open letter of 130 reformist MPs in which the Supreme Leader was blamed for the mass disqualification of reformist candidates. It is said that the two newspapers were closed to prevent them from printing charges of fraud after the Friday elections.(Mehdi Khalaji) • The judiciary cited the two papers&apos; violations of an order issued by secretary of the supreme national security council Hasan Rowhani against the publication of the MPs letter to the Supreme Leader. The supreme national security council could not legally issue such an order without convening a meeting headed by President Khatami, spokesman of the society for defense of press freedoms <b>Mashallah Shamsolvaezin</b> tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. How can printing the MPs letter to the Supreme Leader endanger the national security or be a crime, he asks. (Mahmonir Rahimi) • In today&apos;s <b>RadioFarda Roundtable</b> London-based veteran journalist <b>Masoud Behnud</b> says the majority of the people have little access to any media other than the state radio-TV monopoly, which for the past 10 days has been heavily advocating voter turnout. Amsterdam-based journalist <b>Sina Motalebbi</b> says the turnout would be around 20 million, higher in small towns and villages and lower in Tehran and major cities. Tehran-based political analyst <b>Hatam Qaderi</b> says a minority will turnout for the elections and the Majles will represent a minority of the populace. Nationalist-religious coalition activist and writer <b>Fatemeh Govarai</b> says she has no way of guessing the voter turnout. The four comment about the potential outcome of the elections, from which most of the well-known reformist politicians have been banned. (Amir-Mosaddegh Katouzian) <b>IAEA Finds “Undeclared” Advanced Uranium Enrichment Equipment in Iran</b> • Diplomats close to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said that the IAEA inspectors had found the components of a sophisticated centrifuge of a type Tehran had failed to declare while claiming to provide full disclosure on its atomic program. IAEA officials refused comment but a diplomat said IAEA inspectors had found "design components of a G-2 centrifuge," an advanced model of what is the crucial machine used in configurations of hundreds of gas centrifuges to enrich uranium for either civilian power use or for making an atomic bomb, AP reports. (Alireza Taheri) • Despite the commitments it made to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Islamic Republic continues with its plan to procure advanced generation of centrifuge equipment used for enriching uranium, <i>Jane&apos;s Intelligence</i>&apos;s Beirut-based reporter <b>Ed Blanche</b> tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. The regime pursues its own plans, not what is expected of it by the EU and the US, he adds. (Shahran Tabari, London) <b>Cargo Train Explosion Kills 300 near Neyshabur</b> • More than 300, including fire fighters and top provincial officials, died and 400 were wounded early Wednesday morning after runaway cargo train cars loaded with fuel, explosive and cotton, separated from the engine and exploded after picking up speed and derailing near Neyshabur, 400 miles east of Tehran. The explosion, heard a 100 miles away, leveled several villages and charred fire engines that had arrived on the scene to provide aide for the train wreck. The seismologists recorded a 3.6-magnitude tremor at the exact time of the blast, which involved 17 cars were loaded with sulphur, six with gasoline, seven with fertilizers and 10 with cotton. Having picked up experience in the Bam earthquake, the relief organizations arrived early on the scene and were quick in picking up charred bodies and searching for survivors, an unnamed reporter, who arrived on the scene from Tehran, tells <b>Radio Farda</b>. (Mahmonir Rahimi) <b>Iran, Japan Sign $2 Billion Azadegan Oil Deal</b> • Iran and Japan signed a $2 billion deal to develop the southern section of the Azadegan oil field, one of the largest in the world. The agreement was signed in Tehran by Iran&apos;s Deputy Oil Minister Mehdi Mirmoezi and INPEX President Kunihiko Matsuo ending four years of difficult negotiations. (Ali Sajjadi) • “Our policy, with respect to Iran, has been to oppose petroleum investment there,” US state department spokesman Richard Boucher said. “We remain deeply concerned about deals such as this, and disappointed that these things might go forward,” he added. (Farin Asemi) . به گفته علي شکوري راد، يکي از چهره هاي شاخص اصلاح گرايان، دفتر جبهه مشارکت ايران اسلامي به حکم قوه قضاييه جمهوري اسلامي مهر و موم شد. رهبري جبهه مشارکت را محمد رضا خاتمي، نايب رئيس کنوني مجلس شوراي اسلامي و برادر جوانتر رئيس جمهوري اسلامي بر عهده دارد. همزمان، سايت اينترنتي اين جبهه نيز به حکم قوه قضاييه مسدود شد. جبهه مشاركت ايران اسلامي پيش از بسته شدن دفترش، توقيف روزنامه هاي شرق و وياس نو را نشانه تضييع حقوق مطبوعات و عزم جديد محافظه كاران براي تهديد آزادي بيان خوانده و آنرا محكوم كرده بود.