Partial recount in Iranian election

The Iranian authorities today ordered a partial recount of votes in the country's close presidential election and stopped the publication of a reformist newspaper.

The moves came after reformists accused the military of rigging last Friday's vote in favour of a candidate intending to reinforce Iran's strict Islamic code.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative mayor of Tehran, confounded expectations when he captured almost 20% of the vote in the first round of polling.

Other candidates alleged the result had been due to vote-tampering by military organisations supporting the 49-year-old former Revolutionary Guard commander.

Iran's official media today announced that 80 ballot boxes from the provinces of Tehran, Qom, Masshad and Isfahan would be chosen at random and recounted. It is a small sampling - 42,000 polling stations have been set up throughout Iran, and each has at least one ballot box.

The random recount was ordered by Iran's Guardian Council, which ordered the country's interior ministry to carry it out.

It comes just four days ahead of an expected second round run-off between the leading candidates in Friday's poll - Mr Ahmadinejad and the former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The 70-year-old Mr Rafsanjani, once considered a hardliner, polled 21% of the vote last week. In his bid to regain the post he held from 1989 to 1997, he rebranded himself as a liberal and said it was time to open a new chapter in Iran-US ties. He also hinted that he would increase social and political freedoms.

The hardline controlled judiciary gave no reason for ordering the publication of today's issue of the reformist Daily Eqbal. However, a senior editor at the newspaper told the Associated Press he suspected it had been shut down to prevent the publication of a letter from the election candidate Mahdi Karroubi.

In it, Mr Karroubi said he would resign from the powerful Expediency Council, which arbitrates between the Guidance Council and parliament, because of election irregularities.

The Persian-language daily newspaper was also a high-profile supporter of Mostafa Moin, a former culture minister and the most moderate of the presidential candidates, who finished fifth in the race.

Friday's run-off is the first since the Iranian revolution of 1979, and takes place because no one candidate was able to secure the 50% of the vote needed to win outright victory.

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