Moderate Iran President Begins Test Of Strength

Iran’s new moderate president appealed to hard-line members of Parliament on Tuesday to accept his choices for Cabinet, saying his nominees were the “most suitable of the suitables.”

President Mohamad Khatami spoke to the Majlis, Iran’s parliament, at the start of a two-day, nationally televised debate on his 22 Cabinet nominees. The 270-member legislature will vote on his choices today.

The nomination battle is expected to be an early test of strength between Iran’s hard-liners and Khatami, whose May 23 election was widely seen as a mandate to ease social restrictions in place since the nation’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Khatami faces challenges from Parliament’s majority on two key choices: the culture and interior ministers, whose agencies could be on the front lines of any fight to make Iran a more moderate society.

In his speech to Parliament, Khatami invoked the memory of the late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, saying that Khomeini had often stressed the Iranian constitution’s focus on people - and that individual freedoms were a big part of that.

Khatami also pointed out that his nominees included relatives of those who died in the Islamic revolution and that most had been imprisoned by the late shah of Iran.

Most nominees were expected to win approval, but one has drawn particularly strong opposition: Ataollah Mohajerani, a former vice president named to head the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

In the past, Mohajerani advocated talks with the United States, which has brought him continuing criticism.