FEARING YUGOSLAVIASATION, IRANIAN CLERICAL RULERS ARE PACKING

PARIS 11 Jan. (IPS)    Frightened at the idea of Yugoslaviasation, a number of senior clerics have sent their close families to foreign nations, including the United States and transferred large sum of money to foreign banks, most of them in Switzerland, according to a well informed Iranian scholar and researcher.

"The country is in total chaos and anarchy. Outside Tehran, the regime has no control over the situation. The gangs of bandits the regime claims it kills in larger numbers in border areas with Afghanistan or elsewhere are in fact local population who have taken arms against the authorities", the source told Iran Press Service during an interview, asking for anonymity.

He said one of the reason that has plunged Iran into chaos is the growing sentiment among population, mostly the students, that the regime has reached a dead end.

"The growing sentiment in the first circle of clerical rulers, including people in the office of Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i and his immediate entourage as well as among high-ranking revolutionary guards officers is that they may face the same fate as the former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu or, at best, that of Slovobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia", the source said.

He said the theories of repetition of events that led to the sudden fall of Ceausescu of Romania or a general uprising by the people demanding the departure of present rulers are on everyone's lip and mind.

The Romanian ruler, a friends of the Iranians, was toppled under a sudden but violent popular uprising in December 1989 while he was addressing the nationand was executed afterward alongside his wife, and as to his Yugoslav counterpart, he was forced to leave office last year under growing public pressure.

In his view, the moral among the revolutionary guards file and rank is "very low" and for this reason, to silence the dissidents, the Judiciary power reverts more and more to the Law Enforcement Forces and the Ansar Hezbollah pressure groups or the Basij forces.

"At several occasion were there has been wide range popular unrest and disturbances, with angry protesters attacking banks, setting fire on buses and other buildings belonging to the State, seldom the guards intervened, forcing the authorities to call in the LEF and the Ansar", he observed.

He said in order to persuade the population that they are here to stay as long as God decides, the ruling authorities are increasing public flogging, hanging, amputations of fingers and hands and stoning of women accused of adultery or other major sin.

Iranian newspapers reported in recent days several cases of public hanging by cranes in Tehran, amputation of fingers and hands of thieves as well as stoning of two women, one accused of murdering her husband.

The reports were met with a storm of protest by Iranian opposition groups and personalities outside Iran calling on Western nation to urge Iranian authorities stopping these savage process.

"The number of Iranians of all ages and of both sexes fleeing the country is reaching staggering number", the source confirmed, citing daily increase in the price of basic foodstuff and inflation, wide-ranging unemployment, flagrant discrimination, rampant and generalised corruption, increasing anarchy, kidnapping, absence of security in large cities, and above all, a sentiment that there is no light at the end of the tunnel for the phenomenon that has alarmed both Iranian and international authorities.

"The more the economic, social and political situation worsen, the more people, even the young ones born after the revolution look back to the good old days when there was work for everyone, there were cinemas and discothèques and pubs and open roof cafes, a time when even women could drive alone from the northern city of Tabriz 2000 kilometres south to Shiraz", he said, insisting to remind that he is a "liberal republican".

In his opinion, President Mohammad Khatami's failing to stand firm to the hard liners is one of the reason that has caused public despair. "When Khatami was elected, the nation exploded with joy, hoping for normalisation of the situation, the curtailing of clerics from the government, return of Iranian technocrats abroad, the handling of affairs by experts. In one word, civil society and rule of law and order. But with Mr. Khatami every step backward when challenged by the conservatives, people lost their hope, looking more to radical solutions", he pointed out. ENDS YUGOSLAVIASATION 11101