Clergy reject P.M. choice

Press, 30 July 1980, Page 8

Clergy reject P.M. choice

NZPA-Reuter Teheran President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr said yesterday a special committee would be asked to examine the candidatures for the post of Prime Minister, Radio Teheran reported. His statement came after Parliament failed to back his proposal to appoint the Deputy Interior Minister and Police Chief (Mr Mostafa Mir Salim). The appointment was apparently blocked by fundamentalist members of the majority Islamic Republic Party. As the political crisis pushed into the background the Shah’s death and its consequences, President Bani-Sadr said the committee would be composed of representatives of the Ayatollah Khomeiny, of the presidency, and of Parliament.

Later, Ayatollah Khomeiny refused to appoint a representative to the committee. His' office said that the Ayatollah considered the selection of a Prime Minister was the sole concern of the President and Parliament. After the Parliamentary debate, one member close to Mr Bani-Sadr said the President’s adversaries were proposing Mr Jaledin Farsi, who is considered as being more radical than Mr Salim, for Prime Minister. “But the President will not agree to this,” he said. Members of Parliament, tight-lipped about the debates, were also reticent about the consequences of the Shah’s death. The general conclusion was that it would not alter the situation of the 52 American hostages.

Later, the Speaker of the Parliament (Ayatollah Hachemi Rafsanjani) said the assembly would begin study of the American hostage problem within five days when a special committee will meet to discuss the issue.

A flurry was caused briefly yesterday afternoon when an unidentified radio station said that the Iranian Foreign Minister (Mr Sadeq Qotbzadeh) had resigned and fled to the United States, where he was to seek asylum. The report was denied by his secretary and an American State Department official in Washington. Meanwhile, Iraq yesterday accused Iranian troops of firing at its border posts and said Iraqi forces had put out of action an Iranian military vehicle. And Radio Teheran said that numerous “counter-rev-olutionaries” had been killed in clashes in Iranian Kurdistan. Revolutionary Guards had battled “mercenaries of the Iraqi Baath Party” near the village of Paveh in north-western Iran. A resident of the village was killed and two others were wounded, the broadcast said. It also reported that two Iraqi MiG fighters violated Iranian air space near Baveissi in the western frontier district.. The MiGs fired on Iranian positions, according to the broadcast, without causing any damage. To the south, in the frontier region of Khuzestan, ‘‘lraqi Baath forces” launched an attack, supported by heavy artillery, on Iranian positions, the broadcast said. The Iranians had suffered no losses.