Ahmadinejad defends vote as ‘real and free’

June 14: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday his re-election was “real and free” and cannot be questioned – despite accusations of mass voter fraud.
Ahmadinejad made the comments on Sunday during a press conference – his first since the government announced that he was re-elected to a second term in a landslide victory during Friday’s vote.
But his top opponent accused the government of voter fraud and many of his supporters have clashed with police in Tehran’s streets. About a mile away from Ahmadinejad’s press conference, young Iranians set trash bins, banks and tires on fire as riot police beat them back with batons.
“In Iran, the election was a real and free one. The election will improve the nation’s power and its future,” he told a packed room of Iranian and foreign media.
Several Iranian journalists who asked questions first congratulated Ahmadinejad for his victory. When asked about the allegations of voting irregularities, the hard-line president brushed the claims off, calling them unimportant.
“Some believed they would win, and then they got angry. It has no legal credibility. It is like the passions after a football match. It is not important from my point of view,” he said.
“The margin between my votes and the others is too much and no one can question it.”
Ahmadinejad also accused foreign media of launching a “psychological war” against the country.
Iran calm after vote fraud claims trigger clashes Meanwhile, Tehran was mostly calm Sunday after election fraud claims triggered violent street clashes, but the government maintained fairly tight control of information flow and new details emerged of arrests of high-profile reformists. 
The efforts seemed aimed at avoiding a repeat of the chaos that lasted past midnight Saturday. Opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad set buses and cars ablaze in the capital and threw rocks at police to protest what they viewed as his illegitimate victory. 
Iran restored cell phone service that had been down in the capital since Saturday. But Iranians could not send text messages from their phones, and the government increased its Internet filtering in an apparent bit to undercut liberal voices. 
Web sites linked to reformists’ new hero Mir Hossein Mousavi, who declared himself the true winner of Friday’s presidential race and urged backers to resist the government, were down. Social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter were also not working. 
The restrictions were likely intended to prevent Mousavi’s supporters from organising large-scale protests. But several small groups took to the streets, according to witnesses. About 300 Mousavi supporters gathered outside Sharif University, chanting “Where are our votes?”
About a dozen riot police descended upon a crowd of some 50 Mousavi supporters standing outside his campaign quarters, beating them with batons and causing them to disperse. 
Reports that Mousavi was under house arrest could not be confirmed, but the 67-year-old former prime minister has not been seen in public since he gave a late night press conference Friday where he accused the government of voter fraud. On Saturday, Mousavi released a Web message saying he would not “surrender to this manipulation.”

Courtesy of AP, TEHRAN,