Word: counciler
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...Iranian state TV reports that Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei has ordered the Guardian Council, an unelected clerical body that oversees elections in the Islamic Republic, to investigate complaints from opposition candidates of electoral fraud. At the same time, the authorities banned opposition rallies, although that didn't stop some 200,000 from gathering in Tehran to support opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Khamenei's decision may be a smart tactical retreat from his premature endorsement of the results on Friday - the Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days and hear complaints over any irregularities before presenting the results...
...Ordering the Guardian Council, dominated by conservatives loyal to Khamenei, to take up Mousavi's complaint takes away the main demand around which the opposition is rallying on the streets - the allegation that the state has not followed its own laws during the election. By taking up Mousavi's complaints through the proper legal channels, Khamenei creates an acute dilemma for the opposition: the Guardian Council will deliver an answer only sometime next week, and if protests are suspended pending its outcome, it may be harder to get people back on the streets later. But an opposition that is demanding...
...infuriated the Kremlin, and despite Belarus' achievements with the E.U., the price for angering Russian President Dmitri Medvedev may just be too high. "Exporting food to Russia has been one of [Belarus'] most important and reliable trade sectors," Andrew Wilson, a senior policy fellow at the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations, tells TIME. "The ban will definitely sting." In 2008, Russia bought 93% of Belarus' meat and dairy products, earning Belarus $1 billion...
...Russian city nestled in the Ural mountains. Iran seethed in the aftermath of Ahmadinejad's disputed election victory last weekend even as foreign journalists were officially barred from reporting street protests a day after the largest demonstrations seen in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Meanwhile, the powerful Guardian Council is investigating allegations of poll fraud, and has suggested a partial recount - a solution main opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi has rejected. So why has the hard-line President - so confident in his electoral triumph and dismissive of his detractors - quit town...
...warmth and distrust. The Central Asian countries tagging along are also keen to pit the Chinese and Russians against each other in a global scramble for the vast reserves of natural resources lurking beneath the region's rolling steppe and in the Caspian Sea. Still, in the U.N. Security Council, China and Russia have presented something of a united front when it comes to Iran. Their combined weight has thwarted the West from levying stricter sanctions upon Tehran as it continues its quest for nuclear weaponry...