Monday June 15, 2009
Ahmadinejad delays Russia visit after election
By Guy Faulconbridge and Chris Buckley
YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delayed attending a regional summit in Russia on Monday after protests against his contested win in the presidential election.
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Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looks on during his first news conference after the presidential elections in Tehran June 14, 2009. (REUTERS/Damir Sagolj) |
Ahmadinejad has faced demonstrations and riots at home since Saturday, when officials announced his landslide victory in the election on Friday.
He had been due to arrive in Russia on Monday for separate meetings with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) where Iran has observer status.
"The president will definitely not come today," said a diplomatic source at the Iranian embassy who asked not to be named. The source said it was unclear why the visit had been delayed but added that Ahmadinejad would arrive on Tuesday.
A Russian official who also asked not to be named said the visit had been delayed until Tuesday and added that Ahmadinejad still planned to speak to reporters. The Kremlin declined immediate comment.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has told Ahmadinejad's rival, Mirhossein Mousavi, to pursue his election complaints "calmly and legally", state television said.
Iran's president, who helps rule the world's fifth-largest oil producer, has often stolen the limelight at major conferences, including an SCO meeting in Shanghai in 2006 that was dominated by news about Tehran's nuclear programme.
The SCO groups Russia and China and four ex-Soviet Central Asia republics.
The leaders of India and Pakistan plan to meet on the sidelines of the summit in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, their first such meeting since last November's attack on Mumbai, two sources told Reuters.
NUCLEAR-ARMED POWERS
A meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari could help break the ice between the two nuclear-armed powers.
"According to our information a bilateral Indian-Pakistani meeting is tentatively planned for tomorrow," an official who is helping to organise summit meetings told Reuters.
A Russian official also confirmed a meeting was planned.
Pakistan is keen to resume a peace process broken off by India after the attacks on Mumbai, blamed by New Delhi on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.
Analysts will be closely watching for any sign that Singh is willing to reopen formal peace talks, or whether he will insist, as India has done so far, that Pakistan first takes further action against Pakistan-based militants.
SCO leaders meet for dinner with Medvedev on Monday and some observer nations will also attend. On Tuesday, a fuller meeting of SCO leaders and observer countries will take place.
Washington is pushing for an easing of tensions between India and Pakistan so that Islamabad can channel its energies into fighting Taliban militants on its western border with Afghanistan.
Besides Russia and China, the SCO groups the ex-Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
In addition to Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan and India have observer status. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been invited as a guest as discussions about the situation in Afghanistan is likely to be top themes at meetings.
Russia backed a U.S.-led military operation launched in 2001 to remove Afghanistan's Taliban rulers.
But Moscow has criticised Washington for its conduct in Afghanistan and Russian ally Kyrgyzstan has ordered the United States to leave an air base it was renting to supply troops in Afghanistan.
Officials said North Korea was also likely to be a major theme. Pyongyang has raised tensions by test-firing missiles, restarting a plant to produce weapons-grade plutonium and holding a nuclear test on May 25.
(Additional reporting by Oleg Shchedrov, Gleb Bryanski, Conor Sweeney and Natalya Shurmina in Yekaterinburg and Myra MacDonald in London)
Copyright © 2008 Reuters
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