IRAN: Senior Iranian policymakers are considering moving Iran's capital away from quake-prone Tehran, so alarmed are they by the high death toll and level of destruction caused by the Bam earthquake, officials and newspapers said yesterday.
"The Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) will shortly discuss a plan to move the capital from Tehran," its chief Mr Hassan Rohani was quoted as saying by the Hayat-e No newspaper.
Mr Rohani said a plan to move the capital, which lies on a major seismological fault, was proposed by the council in 1991, "but due to resistance from certain entities in the establishment, the plan was halted".
Mr Rohani said the council would update its 1991 proposal on moving the capital and submit it for consideration by the end of the Iranian calendar year in March 2004. He did not say to where the capital could be moved.
Government spokesman Mr Abdollah Ramazanzadeh said moving the capital had been under discussion since 1989 due to Tehran's heavy overcrowding, chaotic traffic, chronic pollution and earthquake risk.
"There have been contradictory views and still our experts have not been able reach a conclusion," Mr Ramazanzadeh told a news conference yesterday.
Even before the December 26th earthquake in Bam, which measured 6.8 on the Richter scale and killed more than 30,000, seismologists had warned a strong earthquake in Tehran would be catastrophic for the city of 12 million people.
Prof Bahram Akasheh of Tehran university has said a quake of similar magnitude of that in Bam would kill over 700,000 people. The professor of geophysics said government buildings would be destroyed, leaving the state powerless to respond.
Prof Akasheh has written to President Mohammad Khatami to propose moving the capital to the central city of Isfahan, which was the country's capital in the late 16th century. The capital was moved to Tehran in 1788.
Government officials have acknowledged in recent days that building codes in Tehran and other Iranian cities have not been adequately enforced - meaning that most buildings were vulnerable to earthquakes.
Mr Ramazanzadeh said some efforts had been made to make Tehran less of an earthquake risk, but much more needed to be done. "The government's latest move was securing Tehran's natural gas pipeline network. But we still have a long way to go to make Tehran a safe place to live".
Tehran was last hit by a major earthquake in 1830, but seismologists say a major fault line is located along the base of the Alborz mountains in the north of the capital. Numerous small tremors jolt the city each year.