Rafsanjani sees conspiracy to divide Islamic system

TEHRAN (Reuters/AFP) - Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a political rival of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called on Sunday for a fair and thorough examination of complaints about this months disputed election in Iran.
Irans opposition leaders meanwhile rejected a panel set up to hold a partial recount in the vote as political deadlock continued to grip the Islamic republic.
The Guardian Council, Irans top legislative body, is to give its final verdict on the election by Monday (today).
Breaking a post-election silence, Rafsanjani described developments after the vote as a conspiracy by suspicious elements aimed at dividing people and the Islamic system and also targeting peoples trust in it, news agencies reported.
Wherever the people entered the scene with full alertness such plots were foiled, the ISNA and IRNA news agencies quoted him as saying, without elaborating.
The 75-year-old cleric backed the election campaign of former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and was fiercely criticised by Ahmadinejad on television. Rafsanjani praised a decision by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week to extend by five days a deadline for Irans top legislative body, the Guardian Council, to receive and look into complaints by the three defeated candidates.
This valuable move by the Supreme Leader in order to attract the peoples trust towards the election process was very effective, Rafsanjani told a meeting of families of victims of a 1981 bombing in Tehran that killed many senior officials.
Mousavi is insisting on a new vote while another defeated candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, is demanding an independent panel to probe irregularities.
Their defiance flies in the face of the nations 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.
But the streets of Tehran appeared quiet on Sunday, with the authorities warning they would suppress any further protests over the vote that triggered the worst unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The Guardians Council said Friday it would create a special committee of political figures and candidate representatives to recount 10pc of the ballots and draw up a report on the vote.
But Karroubi said in a letter to the Guardians Council that a partial recount was not enough. He called for an independent panel to probe all aspects of the election, in the letter published in his newspaper Etemad Melli.
Mousavi rejected the panel outright on Saturday, while the other defeated candidate, Mohsen Rezai, has agreed to be part of the panel if Mousavi and Karroubi also agree to nominate representatives to the body.
Meanwhile, more than 2,000 people are still in detention and hundreds more are missing in Iran since a government crackdown on protests, the FIDH human rights group said Sunday.
According to the latest information we have, more than 2,000 people have been arrested and are currently in detention, said Karim Lahidji, Vice-President of the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).