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Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gives his Friday prayer sermon at Tehran University - Source: Reuters -
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Iran's top legislative body has again ruled out any annulment of
the June 12 presidential election, as demanded by two defeated
candidates, state television said.
"Iran's Guardian Council
rejects
annulment of the June 12 presidential
election, saying that there have been no major polling
irregularities," the English-language Press TV said.
The report came a day after one of the beaten candidates,
pro-reform cleric Mehdi Karoubi, repeated his call for the council
to annul the election, which official results showed was won by
hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"Instead of wasting time on recounting some ballot boxes ... cancel
the vote," Karoubi said in a letter to the council.
Moderate former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's
main challenger in the election, has also called for the vote to be
annulled, citing irregularities.
The council had made clear before that it would not annul the
election, saying last week it was only ready to recount a random
10% of the votes cast.
The authorities reject opposition charges of vote fraud.
Official results of the election, released on June 13, sparked the
most widespread street protests in Iran since the country's 1979
Islamic revolution.
The defeated candidates have submitted a total of 646 complaints
about the election.
Earlier this week, a Guardian Council spokesman said one common
complaint was that the number of votes surpassed eligible voters in
some constituencies.
But the spokesman, Abbasali Kadkhodai, said it may have been due to
the fact Iranians could vote wherever they wanted and that in any
case it would not have had any major impact on the election
result.
The council is a 12-man body, six senior clerics appointed by the
Supreme Leader
and six Islamic jurists, which
must ensure all laws agree with Islamic Sharia law and Iran's
constitution.
It also vets aspiring candidates for presidential elections and
must approve the election results.
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