[Well-informed sources told Iran Press Service that during the meeting; some members of the Office’s Executive Committee had backed the candidacy of Mr. Asqarzadeh and Mohsen Sazegara, two reformist personalities while others would strongly object to supporting Mr. Khatami, joining the stand adopted by NUISA, but at the end, it was decided to give the President "another chance to adopt a firmer line against the "monopolists"]

Mr. Mohammadi is in prison, serving a 13 and half years jail term. His younger brother, Akbar, had been condemned to 15 years prison, on similar charges of activities against the security of state, offending the leader, undermining Islam and contact with foreign-based Iranian counter-revolutionary organisations, groups and personalities.

"Presidential elections are to be held in a situation where the blade of the Council of Guardians stops dissidents and freedom fighters in the one side while on the other, the leader-led Islamic Judiciary, a tool used to suppress freedoms, jails indiscriminately nationalists, secularists, dissidents and students of all walks, without anybody willing to listen to their complaints", the NUISA said.

The statement blasts the "so-called" reformist MMs (Members of Majles) as well as all others around Khatami for having abandoned the jailed students, journalists and political prisoners.

"Despite the President’s pledges for reforms and political overtures, not only he nor the reformists have done nothing for the imprisoned dissidents, but they behave in such a manner as if nothing has ever happened. When it became clear to everyone that the root of the serial murders was at the highest echelon of the leadership, again, Mr. Khatami stepped back from the promises he had made, including the identification of the murderers, whoever they might be", the NUISA further reminded.

Continuing its bitter criticism of the embattled President, the secularist organisation say that by keeping silence, Mr. Khatami does in fact collaborate with the ruling radical clerics, becoming not only an "associate of repression and dictatorship, but the main guarantor of the murderer rulers who work from behind the curtain".

The statement criticise both the President and the reformists for their silence over the attack of the office of the "Iranian People’s Democratic Front" and houses of the Front’s leaders as well as against the arrest and torturing of Mr. Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, a well-known outspoken students leader and his detention at an unidentified prison.

"Considering the fact the present dictatorship that rules Iran and its ramifications have no belief and respect for people’s basic rights and freedoms and the promised reforms are nothing but a lure, in such conditions, referendum become the people’s essential right for closing the chapter of corruption, plundering and totalitarianism", the statement says.

Announcing its decision to boycott the presidential elections and urging the people to do the same, the NUISA once again objects to the vetting of candidates by the Council of Guardians, a process that it considers as the "apartheid rule of twelve people over an entire nation" before presenting a 14 points political-social platform that demands:

1) The unconditional release from jails of all political prisoners without exception;

2) Full freedom of the press and expression

3) Full freedom for political parties and unions and the creation of a sound atmosphere for their free activities;

4) Abolition of the Council of the Guardians;

5) Abolition of the Expediency Council;

6) Full independence of the Judiciary;

7) The return to homeland of all Iranians who have emigrated, without any discrimination of their religion or political ideology;

8) Respect of everyone’s religious believes and stopping abuse of the faith;

9) Abolition of the system of apartheid and discrimination, dividing the Iranians into first and second class citizens;

10) Return to all Iranian women’s their usurped rights in every respect;

11) Proclamation of equality between all Iranians, regardless of their ethnic, faith or sex;

12) Abolition of all the Foundations, particularly that of the Deprived (Mostaz’afan), that are sucking the blood of the Iranian people and loot their wealth;

13) Disbanding all pressure groups and organisations of oppression and repression, such as the Basij, the Ansar Hezbollah, as well as all other terror organisations of inside and outside the country;

14) And finally, the preparation of a nation-wide referendum, under the control of United Nations and independent international observers in co-operation with all Iranian political parties, giving the Iranian people the possibility to express freely its choice of the regime.

Realising that under present conditions, the proposed referendum would and could not be held, the NUISA calls on the Iranian people, particularly the students to continue the "passive resistance" until the "uprooting of the "black pest" in Iran. ENDS ELECTIONS NUISA 13501