Iran's president says he failed at reform

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
The Associated Press

President Mohammad Khatami: target of jeers

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's embattled President Mohammad Khatami conceded yesterday he had failed to implement his democratic reform program, claiming he had bowed to the will of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his hard-line allies to avoid riots and preserve the ruling Islamic establishment.

"If I retreated, I retreated against the system I believed in," Khatami told Tehran University students, some of whom were openly angry with the man they once saw as the best hope for democracy in Iran. "I considered it necessary to save the ruling establishment."

Some students chanted: "Khatami, Khatami shame on you!" Others yelled: "Incompetent Khatami, may our vote not bless you!"

The reception was a stark change for the intellectual once so deeply admired among Iran's big population of young people that many carried his photograph in their purses or wallets.

Iran's Guardian Council, the conservative oversight body of Muslim clerics that can overrule Parliament, banned many of Khatami's pro-reform legislators and candidates from a February election. Khatami has since been seen by many as an ineffective, lame-duck leader, but he said he chose not to boycott the elections to avoid violence.

"Either we had to hold the elections or face riots," Khatami said in the first of several farewell speeches before his term ends in June. "I didn't consider it in the country's interests that riots erupt."

Khatami has complained repeatedly that he was powerless to stop hard-liners who blocked reform legislation, detained pro-reform activists and shut down more than 100 liberal publications.

"Fortunately, my tenure is coming to an end," Khatami added.

But the soft-spoken president did not refrain from blaming hard-liners and some of his allies for undermining his proposals.
 
"I have claims against some reformers who limited all demands of the people to certain political demands, provoking rigid hard-liners," Khatami said. "[I] have claims against rigid evil thinkers who failed to see people's demands for reform and instead of respecting [the] people's vote [they] began resisting them."

Khatami insisted democracy in Iran would come about only if combined with an Islamic republic.

"The only way to save the country is to establish democracy," he said. "The way toward democracy is through and within the Islamic Republic."

Khatami the optimist said he saw a relative victory in student heckling: "In Third World countries, powerful institutions stand against the people. That the government is not seen as an arrogant body is enough of reforms."