Exiled Iranian leader urges OPPOSITION unity

PARIS, Dec 29, 2009 (AFP) - The leader of the best-known Iranian OPPOSITION movement in exile called on Tuesday for all those opposed to the Islamic regime in Tehran to unite in their efforts to overthrow clerical rule.

Maryam RajaviMaryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said that her followers were already cooperating with more recent protest movements on the streets of Tehran and called on OPPOSITION leaders to do the same.

"It's a call for solidarity among all those who reject the rule of the supreme leader -- the velayat e-faqih (clerical rule) -- and who want to see freedom installed in Iran," she told AFP in Paris.

Rajavi's NCRI political umbrella group includes the People's Mujahideen of Iran, a banned armed resistance movement. The group's leadership lives in exile but it claims to have tens of thousands of supporters in Iran.

Iran has been in political turmoil since June's presidential election, which was officially won by Mahmoud Ahamdinejad but which sparked street protests from supporters of defeated challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Mousavi is a former regime insider who has not challenged the basis of Iran's Islamist system of government, but Rajavi claimed that at the grass roots the protest movement has now mutated into an attempt to overthrow it.

She urged all those opposed to the current regime to unite behind a banner calling for the overthrow of Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei and for the will of the people to take precedence over guidance from clerics.

"What we call the 'Green movement' against the electoral fraud quickly disappeared to be replaced by a deeper movement whose goal is the total overthrow of the regime," she said.

"As you saw on Sunday, the slogans at the demonstrations were 'Death to Khamanei' and 'Death to the Rule of the Clerics'," she added, urging other OPPOSITION movements to adopt this position.

"On the ground, in the streets, all those who want the overthrow of the regime are working together," she claimed, predicting the government would fall within 12 months if foreign powers remain neutral in the crisis.

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AFP