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'Enemies' aiming to provoke ethnic
unrest: Iran
LONDON, May 29 (IranMania)
- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused his country's
"enemies" of trying to provoke ethnic unrest but said the alleged
conspiracy would be defeated, Iran's state-run television reported.
"Provoking ethnic differences is the last resort by the enemies against
the Iranian people and the Islamic republic," he said in a meeting with
Iranian MPs. "There is no doubt that this plot will be defeated."
The term enemies is usually used to refer to the United States, Israel and
sometimes Britain, AFP noted.
Khamenei's comments came after ethnic Azeris in Iran's northwest rioted
last week after a government-run newspaper published an offensive cartoon.
The judiciary has shut the paper and arrested the artist and editor
responsible.
According to the ISNA news agency, protests continued Sunday with some 200
Iranian Azeri students gathering around the parliament building in Tehran.
Anti-riot police dispersed the protest.
But Khamenei underlined that "Azeries decisively defended the Islamic
republic and its integrity during the war" with Iraq which raged from 1980
to 1988.
Ethnic Azeris, concentrated in northwestern Iran, account for some 25% of
Iran's population.
Iran has also seen an increase in ethnic tensions among its ethnic Arab,
Kurdish and Baluch minorities over the past year, with regime officials
pointing the finger at a US, British and Israeli plot to destabilise the
Islamic republic.
"Insulting the Azeris was an unwise mercenary move to provoke unrest," the
deputy head of the judiciary, Hojatoleslam Ebrahim Raeesi, was also quoted
as saying Sunday.
"Today the enemies are seeking to break the unity in the country. On one
side they want to create a conflict between Arabs and Iranians, and on the
other side they resort to Shiite-Sunni differences," he added.
http://www.iranmania.com
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