Rafsanjani Is Sworn In as Iran President

Iran’s new president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, said Thursday that he would help gain the release of Western hostages in Lebanon but only if the United States adopts a friendlier stance toward the Islamic Republic.

Rafsanjani spoke hours after being sworn into office before the Majlis, Iran’s Parliament.

According to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, monitored here, Rafsanjani reiterated his conditions for helping free the hostages during a meeting with visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Sahabzada Yaqub Khan.

“I have said many times that if the United States expects us to help in the Lebanese issue, it should show in practice that it has dropped its hostile stand against us,” he said, citing Washington’s freezing of Iranian assets and its support of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. “Then we will be inclined to solve the issue.”

Yaqub Khan was in Tehran specifically to gain Rafsanjani’s cooperation in freeing the 14 Western hostages, eight of them Americans. Most are believed to be held by pro-Iranian groups.

‘Domineering Tone’

The Iranian news agency said Rafsanjani also criticized the “domineering tone of U.S. statements on Iran and the linking of the hostage issue to that of bilateral relations.”

Following the inauguration, Ahmed Khomeini, son of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s late supreme leader, rejected U.S. overtures to free the captives and warned Rafsanjani not to stray from the ideals of the 1979 revolution.

The 43-year-old Khomeini, who holds no official government post, spurned any possible relations between Tehran and Washington and dismissed speculation that Iranian authorities have been indirectly in contact with U.S. officials to discuss the release of the Western hostages in Lebanon.

Tehran Radio quoted Khomeini as saying Iranian officials will “punch America in the face, and they will kick America out of the Middle East.”

In his address to a packed Parliament hall in central Tehran, Rafsanjani warned hard-line factions that they would have to drop their extremism in favor of a vigorous economic recovery program.

Improving living standards for the poor should take precedence over political differences, he said.

“It isn’t right to safeguard the nation with the hungry, poor people always marching forward and giving their life. It cannot go on that way,” Rafsanjani said.

He also told Parliament, “This country has great potential for economic growth, but since we came to power, we have not done much (to achieve it).”

Rafsanjani, who won 94.5% of the vote in the July 28 election, pledged to use the increased powers of the presidency to avoid political strife, but said political infighting has undermined efforts to form a Cabinet. Despite this, he said he expected to present his 24-member Cabinet to the Majlis for approval on Sunday.