President Khatami, re-elected in June’s presidential elections with a comfortable 77 percent of the votes, is to formally begin his second term when he takes his oath of office in the Majles, or parliament, on 5th August and introduce his new cabinet for a vote of confidence within two weeks.

"I remind to the President, a noble personality, a true son of the revolution from the sacred House (of the prophet) to never forget defending the people, the nation’s interests and giving priority to the most deprived while cherishing the ultimate values of the religion and the revolution", Mr. Khameneh'i said.

Both in his endorsement statement and a speech pronounced later, the fundamentalist leader strongly stressed on the "urgent and imperative need" to fight against poverty, economic difficulties, depravation and especially moral corruption, which he blamed the western influence.

"It is trough this economic problem that our enemies try en infiltrate and paralyse the revolution", Mr. Khameneh'i added.

However, he said the economic problems of the country were not insurmountable and could be resolved thanks to the presence of first class experts the country abounds and on the basis of perseverance, omitting deliberately the unprecedented wave of brain drain and emigration and the nation’s dramatic shortage of modern age technocrats.

"We are in a crucial phase where one must act quickly in order to resolve the important problems such as the economic crisis and above all employment," said Khameneh’i, calling on the president to fight social and economic corruption.

The state-run, leader-controlled Radio read Mr. Khatami’s speech while broadcasting "live" that of Mr. Khameneh'i and Mr. Hashemi-Rafsanjani, reading the endorsement address.

"This is exactly where the basic problem of the Iranian system lays, for, in the one hand, the president faces the leader who has all the powers, and on the other, the Majles, particularly this one that is controlled by the reformists, and often, the two do not speak the same language, as seen in the famous case when the leader stopped lawmakers to reform the existing unpopular press law", noted Mr. Mohammad Mehdi Khalaji, an independent Iranian journalist living in Paris.

While Mr. Khatami again stressed on the need to strengthening islamist democracy, an anachronism he has made himself a champion, analysts said the present double-head system would continue to live in its cocoon until one of the two, islamism or republicanism is cut off.

Nevertheless, Mr. Khatami reiterated in his message that he remains committed to liberalising the Islamic regime.

"The president of the republic is certainly responsible to the supreme leader and the parliament, but he is above all directly responsible to the people" the 57-year old Khatami said, adding such a regime "is compatible with Islamic and republican values". "That is called religious democracy".

Conservative clerics, who belong to Khameneh’i's camp, with some of them "defecting" to Mr. Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s side, have in recent weeks intensified their criticism of Khatami's government, accusing it of "laxness" in the fight against corruption and "depravity."

Khatami's capacity to manoeuvre also appears even smaller now than in his first term. Those of Iran’s supreme leader dwarf his powers. Khatami still has no control over the courts, army or police. He only reluctantly announced his decision to seek re-election.

Playing his most favourite tune, Mr. Khameneh'i touched on the differences between the "so-called" western democracies that not only defend the capitalists, but also votes into laws people’s desires and wills, "including their moral deviations, thus generalising corruption of all kinds".

He urged the official to accept "constructive criticism" but warned against "destroying the Judiciary", a power still firmly under his control and serves as his political and security arms against reformers.

"The worst attitude towards the Judiciary is for some people trying to insult and ruin it once a verdict has been pronounced and is going to be applied", he said, referring to the reformists who accuses the power of harsh treatment of dissidents, many of them subject to physical and psychological tortures in undisclosed prisons.

Mr. Khameneh’i also called on the government "not to allow a small minority to become the source for the propagation of depravation, corruption and prostitution in society", a reference to reformist journalists, intellectuals, clerics and politicians Mr. Khameneh'i believe they are under the western influence.

Commenting of Thursday’s endorsement ceremony and the coming oath taking at the Majles, the hard-line afternoon daily "Keyhan" took a negative view of the Mr. Khatami’s new four year presidency, saying "four years from now, the situation would not have changed much".

Under the title of "Khatami 84" (Iranian year coinciding with 2005, the end of Mr. Khatami’s present term), the paper expressed the hope to see that students and scholars, journalists, the young and other classes are not be "manipulated at the hands of political gamblers pretending to support the President, the figurants and the cowardly competitions".

"Can one be hopeful to see the four future years are those of respect of the Constitution and its organs? News we get tend to dash such hope, like the one that says the new cabinet would not be much different from the past one", the daily that speaks for the conservative’s ultras wrote, expressing the fear to see Mr. Khatami ending as the "Commodore of Reconstruction" did, a reference to the former president Ayatollah Hashemi-Rafsanjani who had bestowed the title to himself. ENDS KHATAMI ENDORSEMENT 2801