WORLD> Middle East
Iran assembly approves most of hard-line Cabinet
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-04 02:48

President Barack Obama has stepped up diplomatic engagement with Iran to reduce international tension, but the turmoil and allegations of Western interference have hampered the effort.

The U.S. and its European allies have given Iran until the end of September to agree to nuclear talks or face harsher sanctions. They are worried that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons _ a claim Tehran denies.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, offered an opening for possible compromise with the West on Tuesday, saying Iran would present new proposals and would be ready to open talks to ease international concerns.

But Ahmadinejad was as defiant as ever Thursday, saying "no one can impose sanctions on Iran anymore."

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi also took a tough stance, proclaiming Iran would not bend to Western deadlines set by "threat and pressure."

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki will continue in his post in Ahmadinejad's second term. Parliament also endorsed the president's nominees in key posts heading the interior, intelligence and oil ministries.

Alireza Nader, an Iran specialist with the Washington-based RAND Corp., said he believed conservative lawmakers rallied around Ahmadinejad because of growing foreign pressure and the continuing postelection turmoil.

"This is not a good time for the conservatives to engage in their squabbles," said Nader. "It is better for them to stand at least somewhat united in the face of external and internal pressures and form a government that is able to function under adverse circumstances."

But Nader said significant differences remained between Ahmadinejad and other conservative factions.

Some of those differences were apparent in the vote over the three women who Ahmadinejad proposed as Cabinet ministers. Lawmakers approved a 50-year-old gynecologist, Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, as health minister but rejected his nominees to head the education and welfare and social security ministries.

"With a woman in the Cabinet, women have achieved their long-awaited dream," said Dastjerdi after she was approved.

Some conservatives have criticized Ahmadinejad for elevating women to the Cabinet. Last month, the Emrouz newspaper quoted Mohammad Taghi Rahbar, a member of the parliament's judiciary committee, as saying there were "religious doubts" over how women would cope with the positions.

Women's rights activists have criticized Ahmadinejad's appointments as a desperate ploy to improve his popularity rather than a true interest in promoting women's rights. Since coming to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad has cracked down hard on women activists.

Dastjerdi is the first female minister since Education Minister Farrokhroo Parsay, who served in the 1970s but was executed for corruption shortly after Islamic clerics seized power in the 1979 revolution.

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