Khamenei urges vigilantes to quash 'riots'

IRAN: Iran's Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, yesterday urged right-wing vigilantes to quash demonstrations by thousands of Iranians protesting the policies of the clerical regime.

"I call upon the pious and the Hizbullah guards to intervene wherever they see riots," he said in an address broadcast by Iranian state television.

Ayatollah Khamenei accused the demonstrators of staging "riots" at the instigation of US-based Iranian exiles who beam satellite television transmissions into Iranian homes where the already disaffected young are subverted.

He accused the exiles of acting as "mercenaries in the pay of the enemy \" and said that "the Iranian people will be pitiless" towards these "mercenaries".

During a second day of demonstrations some of the 3,000 protesters chanted, "Death to Khamenei" and "The clerical regime is nearing its end!" They shouted "Vigilantes commit crimes, the leader \ supports them". These slogans reveal that they no longer have any respect for the ayatollah, the ultimate authority in the Islamic Republic of Iran, or for the system of governance which he heads. Criticism of the Supreme Guide and the "Vilayet-e-Faqih", the "Rule of the Theologians," is banned. Critics court prison. Hardline clerics claim Ayatollah Khamenei's powers are unlimited and cannot be challenged.

Scores of Hizbuallahis on motorcycles chased about 300 protesters, beating them with sticks outside a student hostel. When protesters threw stones at the police, they threw them back. Students in the hostel tossed stones and Molotov cocktails at both police and vigilantes.

While several people were taken away with head injuries, an unknown number were arrested. An official said that most of the detainees were not students.

The protests began on Tues- day when a small number of students rallied to state their opposition to the privatisation of universities. They were joined by thousands who transformed the event into the largest demonstration against Iran's political leadership since last November.

Police briefly detained 80 of the demonstrators and warned that no further rallies would be permitted. The government has adopted a tough line to pre-empt violent rallies on July 9th, 1999, to commemorate protests mounted by students against media restrictions. Those rallies were the largest staged in Tehran since the fall of the Shah in 1979.

Current unrest in Tehran flows from widespread popular dissatisfaction over the refusal of the dominant conservative clerical faction to allow the liberal President, Mr Muhammad Khatami, and parliament to adopt reformist political, social and economic legislation.

Last month 127 out of Iran's 270 deputies sent a six-page letter to Ayatollah Khamenei warning him that the conservatives' path is jeopardising the "legitimacy" of the Islamic republic and risks undermining the territorial integrity and national security of the country.