Iranian riot policemen stand guard outside Tehran University as the protests ran into its sixth night

TEHRAN, June 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Tehran for the sixth day on Monday, June 16, as the Islamic Republic accused the United States of “flagrant interference” into its internal affairs.

Protesters converged on the area in cars, as they have been doing since the gathering of a few hundred students on Tuesday, June 10, night grew into nightly protests by thousands of people.

They chanted slogans against the conservative scholars and criticized the reformist President Mohammad Khatami, accusing him of betraying hopes for change.

Islamic vigilantes, some carrying assault rifles and wearing bullet-proof vests, patrolled streets near the campus, and gunshots were heard with no reports of any casualties, the BBC News Online reported.

Police have warned the vigilantes against taking the law into their own hands.

The previous five nights of protests left some 60 people, including 32 policemen, injured as five state banks, 22 cars and 34 motorbikes were damaged, according to the official IRNA news agency said on Sunday.

Protestors have jammed the streets of Tehran's capital which were clogged with cars carrying people wanting to join the protests.

Scores have been injured or arrested, while the protests have also reportedly spread to the provincial cities of Isfahan, Ahvaz and Shiraz - where one person was killed in circumstances that remain unclear, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

‘Flagrant Interference’

"First it is necessary to clarify the obligations to us that other Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories must respect,” Asefi

The protests came as a group of Iranian dissidents issued an unprecedented declaration defending the right to criticize their leaders.

"Sitting or making individuals sit in the position of divine and absolute power is a clear heresy towards God and a clear affront to human dignity," said the declaration, signed by 248 intellectuals, reformist journalists and several scholars.

People of Iran had "the right to fully supervise the action of their rulers," read the declaration.

Meanwhile, there has been an angry response from the government to comments from U.S. President George W Bush, who called the nightly protests in Tehran "the beginnings of people expressing themselves toward a free Iran".

Iran’s foreign ministry said it had sent a "vigorous protest" to the United States, via the Swiss embassy here, over Washington's "flagrant interference in Iran’s internal affairs.”

"We reserve the right to take legal action over this," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

Asefi said U.S. officials were overstating the importance of the events.

"The Americans ignore the presence of millions of people to welcome the supreme leader and president, but they call the protests of a few individuals the voice of the people."

When asked if it was possible for Tehran and Washington to resume discreet but direct diplomatic contacts, Asefi simply replied "No".

"The U.S. has to accept it is a member of the international community just like everybody else, and is not superior. If this mentality changes, the Americans can escape from their growing isolation," he added.

This came as Washington heaped accusations on the Islamic Republic for allegedly being bent on developing weapons of mass destruction and giving refuge to terrorists.

Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has charged the United States was orchestrating the protests in Iran.

U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said Saturday, May 31, that Washington would like to see a regime change in Iran, amid reports that the Pentagon is pressing on with plans to push for a public uprising to topple the current Tehran government.

Tehran and Washington severed ties shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, and official communications are carried via the Swiss embassy.

IAEA Protocol Still Refused

Meanwhile, Iran reiterated its refusal to sign an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that would allow the U.N.'s atomic energy watchdog to conduct inspections of suspect sites.

Asefi said the Islamic republic would hold out on allowing additional inspections as long as other signatories to the NPT did not fulfill their treaty obligations related to the transfer of peaceful nuclear technology.

"First it is necessary to clarify the obligations to us that other Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories must respect, and to know how the international community can help us improve our nuclear science for peaceful purposes. Then we start talking," Asefi said.

"We are ready to take into account the worries of the agency (IAEA), and if it shows flexibility, we are also ready to do the same and find a solution," he added.

His comments came just hours before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was to begin a meeting in Vienna to hear a report that Iran had failed to fully honor its nuclear safeguards agreement.

Tehran insists it has declared all its nuclear facilities and is only interested in nuclear technology to generate electricity.

"It is our right to benefit from atomic energy," Rafsanjani, who now heads Iraq’s top political arbitration body, was quoted by the state news agency IRNA as saying during a visit to an aeronautics factory.

Rafsanjani went on to assert that Iran’s foreign policy was "purely defensive", and that there was "no policy of aggression in the Islamic republic".