IRAN: European leaders reject accusations of meddling

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European leaders today expressed alarm over the threat of a crackdown in Iran and rejected accusations by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that they are fomenting unrest.

In an address in Tehran, Khamenei said there was no widespread fraud in last week’s disputed presidential election and told opposition supporters to end their protests or face the consequences.

‘I will tell you the outstanding diplomats of some Western countries who talk to us with diplomatic courtesy up to now during the past few days have taken their masquerade away from their faces and they are showing their true image,’ he said, according to a translation provided by the BBC. ‘They are displaying their enmity against the Islamic state, and the most evil of them is the British government.’

The British Foreign Office told Iran’s charge d’affairs in London that Khamenei’s comments were ‘unacceptable and had no basis in fact,’ a spokesman told the Associated Press on customary condition of anonymity. The Foreign Office had summoned the Iranian ambassador but told the Associated Press that the more junior diplomat attended the meeting with political director Mark Lyall Grant.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy denounced the poll as “fraud.”

‘The extent of the fraud is proportional to the violent reaction,’ Sarkozy was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse news agency. ‘If [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad has really made progress since the last election and if he really represents two thirds of the electorate ... why has this violence erupted?’

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the speech was ‘disappointing,’ according to the Reuters news agency.

In Switzerland, Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi said Iran should hold a new election observed by international monitors, the AP reported. Her human rights office in Iran was raided last year, its files confiscated and several members subsequently arrested.

-- Amber Smith in Los Angeles