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Post-poll Unrest in Iran Opposition protests despite crackdown

AFP, Tehran
Iran's opposition stepped up its challenge to the Islamic regime yesterday holding another rally even as the authorities intensified a crackdown on the media to try to contain the biggest crisis since the 1979 revolution.
Tens of thousands of supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi took part in what was billed as a "silent" protest rally, marching through central Tehran, witnesses said.
Wearing green wrist- and head-bands in the colour of Mousavi's campaign, the demonstrators carried placards accusing re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of having "stolen" their votes in Friday's poll.
Iranian state television broadcast brief footage of the rally.
Grappling with the biggest wave of public anger in three decades of Islamic rule, *ran lashed out at enemy plots." hauling in foreign ambassadors and rounding up scoresof reformists.
1 he foreign ministry called in Swiss ambassador I.ivia Leu Agosti, who represents US interests in Iran amid a three-decade-old rupture in relations, to protest against what it called "interfering remarks" by US officials, state television reported.
US President Barack Obama had voiced "deep concerns" about the aftermath of last Friday's election although he added: "It is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling.”
His spokesman Robert Gibbs insisted: "The president will continue to express those concerns and ensure that we are not meddling."
The Iranian authorities threatened legal action against websites which publish material that "creates tensions" and issued a new warning to the foreign media, already facing tight restrictions on theirwork.
The media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said a dozen Iranian journalists and bloggers have been arrested and many others have gone into hiding.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini said he would consider a partial recount after the opposition held mass protests over what it charges was blatant rigging of the election that gave Ahmadinejad another four-year term.
In defiance of an official ban, Mousavi himself called for marches and a day of mourning on Thursday for protesters slain in the postelectionclashes.
And he repeated his , > demand fp^^..^sult^.jpf whqt he branded a "shame-ful fraud" to be annulled and a new vote called, in a statement on his movement’s website.
At least seven people have been killed and many more wounded in clashes, with protests reported not only in Tehran but also other major cities after an election that has exposed deep divisions in the oil-rich nation.
Ahmadinejad remained defiant, saying his landslide victory in Friday’s vote showed faith in his government of "honesty and service to the people."
Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state, said he was asking the Guardians Council, a 12-member body made up of jurists and clerics, to examine the complaints of irregularities.
The council said it had invited Ahmadinejad's three challengers to set out their grievances on Saturday.
Supporters of Ahmadinejad and Mousavi had staged rival rallies on Tuesday, each calling out hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets of Tehran, state media said.
Foreign media were banned from covering the demonstrations under tough new restrictions aimed at keeping them off the streets, but Iranian newspapers published pictures.
The authorities have warned they will nip in the bud any "velvet revolution" and have rounded up scores of people in Tehran and other cities, including prominent reformists close to former president Mohammad Khatami.
Reformist sources that several more leading figures were arrested on Wednesday, including Mohammad Atrianfar, a confidant of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and prominent analyst and journalist Saeed Laylaz.
In a sign of the tensions within the regime, the crackdown drew criticism from some senior conservatives, notably parliament speaker Ali Larijani who spoke out against an attack on students atTehran university.
Iran issued a new warning to the foreign media, saying some outlets had become the "mouthpiece of the rioters' movement.”
The Revolutionary Guards, set up to defend the Islamic republic from internal and external threats,” threatened legal action against online media which "create tensions."
Some phone, texting and Internet services have been disrupted, and protesters have turned to Twitter to spread word of the dramatic events.
The opposition campaign also moved to the sporting arena, with some Iranian footballers wearing wrist bands in green, the colour of Mousavi's campaign, in their World Cup qualifier against South Korea.
In the strongest remarks so far by a Western leader. ., French .-President-, Nicqfas Sarkozy, said there was electoral "fraud." Germany said it believed there were "irregularities."