Iran promises election recount
Updated on 16 June 2009
Iran's top legislative body is ready to recount disputed ballot boxes from last week's presidential election won by hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, state media said on Tuesday.
Iran's top legislative body is ready to recount disputed ballot boxes from last week's presidential election won by hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, state media said on Tuesday.
But a senior reformist ally of defeated candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi said they wanted a rerun rather than a recount of "a few ballot boxes".
Mousavi has appealed to the "Guardian Council", the main legislative body of the Islamic republic, for the election to be annulled, but has said he was not optimistic about its verdict.
A council spokesman said it was "ready to recount the disputed ballot boxes claimed by some candidates, in the presence of their representatives."
"It is possible that there may be some changes in the tally after the recount," spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
Meanwhile, in the United States US president Barack Obama said it was up to Iran to make decisions on who should rule their country.
But he admitted that he was deeply troubled by the violence he had seen.
