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Iranian President Accepts Resignation Of Culture Minister
by Jean-Michel Cadiot
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has accepted the resignation of reformist Culture Minister Ataollah Mohajerani, long a target of conservatives, the official IRNA news agency reported Thursday.
"President Khatami today accepted the resignation of the minister for culture and Islamic orientation and appointed him the new chairman of the International Center for Dialogue among Civilizations," IRNA said.
Mohajerani first tried to resign in April, just before the conservative courts closed more than 20 mostly pro-reform newspapers and journals, depriving Khatami of one of his most effective political tools.
The president refused, but Mohajerani again submitted a letter of resignation in October, which Khatami reportedly asked him to tone down.
Khatami had said he was looking into Mohajerani's request to leave the government, where he is one of the most popular figures with Iranian youth, a major source of support for the reformist president in the 1997 landslide election that brought him to power.
Speaking to several thousand students last week, Khatami described Mohajerani as "a very dear colleague."
Mohajerani, whose ministry issues press licenses, survived an impeachment scare last year when the parliament was still in the hands of conservatives angry over his "laxity" in controlling the media.
In November, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, castigated the record of Mohajerani's ministry, telling state radio he was "not at all satisfied with the deeds and the record of the government's cultural officials."
Mohajerani has expressed his wish to stay in government alongside Khatami, despite the conservatives' efforts to destroy the reform movement associated with the president. He has suggested the possibility of switching to the post of vice president.
"Whether the president accepts my resignation or not, whether I am a minister or a vice president, for example, I will be by his side," Mohajerani said October 23rd.
In the interview, Mohajerani also expressed some hesitancy about the longstanding bans on reformist publications.
"I tell newspaper bosses that freedom is like the mountain road north out of Tehran, which has a thousand curves. It's not a highway," he said.
Observers agreed that Mohajerani's departure would be a loss, in some way, for Khatami.
"Khatami is losing a partisan, but especially a political card of great weight within his government," said the political analyst Iraj Rashti.
"Mohajerani translated the president's ideas into action. His absence sanctions a certain political powerlessness for the government to reform the Islamic republic," said Rashti, who said the resignation would hurt Khatami if he seeks re-election in May's presidential election.
"It's a victory by attrition for the conservatives," he said.
Some said the 46-year-old Mohajerani, who first won election to parliament 20 years ago and is the darling of Iran's cultural world, may have political plans of his own.
"Of course Khatami is weakened, as he didn't want it to go to this point," said analyst Khosro Abedi.
"Khatami himself resigned from the culture ministry in 1992, and it was the date for his future. Mohajerani is also a very strong figure," he said.
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