Mr. RAFSANJANI BLAME ISRAEL AND THE US FOR HIS DEMISE

TEHRAN 25^TH Feb. (IPS) In his first public apparition since his dramatic defeat in the last week Majles elections, ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani played down the humiliation both himself and the conservatives suffered at the polls, saying such things happens in a family.

Conducting the Friday prier at the campus of Tehran University, a low profile Hashemi Rafsanjani very different from the one that just eight days ago would see himself as the future Speaker of the Majles (parliament) said bowed to the results and called on all parties, including the defeated conservatives to the rules of the game.

As Mr. Rafsanjani was speaking, it was not clear if he had made it to the 290 seats Majles or he needed a second runoff.

According to the last counts, the former president did not got the 25 per cent of the votes necessary to be elected in the first round, but as both the defeated conservatives and the victorious reformists had objected to Mr. Rafsanjani's votes, claiming rigging, the Interior Ministry in agreement with the Council of Guardians decided to recount ballots in 105 polling stations of the capital.

Some informed sources told Iran Press Service that thousands of votes put in the boxes for Mrs. Fa'ezeh Hashemi had been counted in the name of her father.

But the radical afternoon daily "Keyhan" that speaks for the Intelligence community accused the reformists to have stolen votes from Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani in order to bar him from the Majles.

Observers are unanimous that Mr. Rafsanjani's low turn out was the expression of the voter's anger, many of them young ones, with the present theocratic Islamic system.

Mr. Rafsanjani thanked all those who had voted for him as well as those he didn’t, saying one has to respect the will of the people regardless of the results.

He blamed the enemies of Islam and the Islamic Republic, particularly Israel and the United States spreading rumours about him and about the future of the nation by claiming that the revolution was finished in Iran.

Attacking those who pretend that revolution was over in Iran and that the Thermidor had arrived, Mr. Rafsanjani said they draw wrong conclusions from the election results.

The Chairman of the Expediency Council also strongly lashed out at the United States for its "dirty carrot and stick" policy towards Iran.

"On the one hand the US Secretary of State calls for improvement of ties with Iran and on the other hand, the American Senate votes to punish those countries having nuclear cooperation with Iran", he noted.

The Senate Thursday passed a bill aimed at punishing countries deemed to be aiding Iran's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

"I tell them not to repeat your past mistakes, you don't know the Iranian people, you don't know Islam, you don't know the revolution, the love of the people for their religion, their revolution and their leaders. These matters (the resounding defeat of the conservatives and the landslide victory of the reformists) in our country are like relations in a family, it doesn’t matter who is up and who is down, who went up and who came down, what matters is that it all happens in the family", he said with a choked voice.

Mr. Rafsanjani, whose last nickname is "The Godfather" advised the new victors to safeguard the revolution and its achievement, to hasten the path of the revolution and to pursue economic development started under his tenure of presidency.

Reminding that the construction of the first line of the Tehran's Metro, or underground that was inaugurated three days ago by President Mohammad Khatami had started under his presidency, Mr. Rafsanjani boasted that Iran had acquired a modern metro building technology of it's own capable of being exported to other counrtries. ENDS RAFSANJANI PRIERS