Britain calls arrests "harassment and intimidation"
Eight Iranian employees of the British embassy in Tehran were detained on accusations of involvement in post-election unrest in the Islamic Republic as reformist candidates rejected a partial recount of votes.
"Eight local employees at the British embassy who had a considerable role in recent unrest were taken into custody," Fars said, without giving a source. "This group played an active role in provoking recent unrest," the semi-official Fars News Agency reported.
Britain called the arrests "harassment and intimidation" and demanded the release of the embassy employees.
"This is harassment and intimidation of a kind that is quite unacceptable," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told reporters at an international conference in Corfu. "We want to see (the embassy staff) released unharmed.
Iran has accused Western powers — Britain and the United States in particular — of inciting street protests and violence that rocked the country after its disputed presidential election. Britain has rejected the accusations.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on June 19 called Britain the "most treacherous" of Iran’s enemies which he accused of orchestrating an unprecedented outpouring of protest after the June 12 poll.
The U.K. and Iran have exchanged tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown expelling two Iranian diplomats Tuesday after Iran forced two British diplomats to leave.
Britain suspended its diplomatic ties with Iran after the Islamic revolution in 1979, only reopening an embassy in 1988, following the Iran-Iraq war. Full normalisation only took place in 1998.
Remain defiant
Earlier on Sunday, Iran’s opposition leaders rejected a panel set up to hold a partial recount in the disputed presidential vote as political deadlock continued to grip the country.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s strongest rival in the June 12 race, is insisting on a new vote while another defeated candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, is demanding an independent panel to probe irregularities.
"If an independent panel is set up by the Guardians Council with full responsibility to investigate all aspects of the election, I will welcome it and later nominate my representative," the reformist Karroubi wrote in a letter to the council which was published in his newspaper Etemad Melli.
Karroubi also said it should be up to the supreme leader to rule on the results of the disputed presidential election.
"I expect the Guardians Council to cancel the election, which evidently is full of irregularities and fraud" he said.
But he said since Khamenei had already decided to approve the election that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power and rule out any annulment, the council "should leave the burden of responsiblity on the leader."
The defiance of both Mousavi and Karroubi flies in the face of the nation’s top political arbitration body the Expediency Council, which has urged all candidates to cooperate with the panel set up by the electoral watchdog the Guardians Council to conduct a partial recount of ballot boxes from the June 12 election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.
The Guardians Council, an unelected body of 12 jurists and clerics, said Friday it would create a special committee of political figures and candidate representatives to recount 10 percent of the ballots and draw up a report on the vote.
Main opposition leader Mousavi, outright rejected the panel on Saturday and repeated his demand the vote be annulled.
"Limiting the probe into complaints about electoral irregularities to recounting 10 percent of the ballot boxes cannot attract people’s trust and convince public opinion about the results," he said on his campaign website.
"I insist again on cancelling the election (results) as the most suitable way out of the problem," he said.
Independent body
Mousavi, who was prime minister in the post-revolution years, won just 34 percent of the vote against 63 percent for Ahmadinejad, a gap of 11 million votes, according to official results.
Despite ordering a partial recount, the Guardians Council said no "major irregularities" have so far been found and the election was the "cleanest we have had."
Mousavi however called for the issue to be referred to a body which observes Sharia (Islamic) law, has legal status and is independent.
It must also be "approved by all candidates and supported by those top clergy who have supported the resolution of the issue," said the former prime minister, who trailed in 11 million votes behind Ahmadinejad according to official results from the June 12 election.
Abbasali Kadkhodai, spokesman for the Guardians Council, told the Mehr news agency on Friday evening that the candidates had 24 hours to name their representatives to the panel.
However by Saturday evening all candidates had yet to nominate their representatives.
"As far as I know and as far as the media has said, they have not forwarded the names of their representatives who are supposed to be part of the panel to supervise the recount," Kadkhodai told the semi-official Mehr news agency.