WORLD : Rafsanjani Defends Quake Aid
President Hashemi Rafsanjani said today that Iran should be thankful for foreign aid for earthquake victims, defending the help against hard-liners who oppose it.
Rafsanjani, speaking a weekly prayers at Tehran University, cited an editorial in a radical newspaper last week that denounced assistance from countries like the United States and said people chanted “Death to America” even from under the rubble.
“I don’t think we see the people who are under the debris saying, ‘No, we don’t want foreign aid,” the president said. “The response and activities of the foreigners were really good and acceptable.”
The anti-Western faction in the Iranian government, led by lawmaker Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, opposes any form of foreign assistance to the Islamic Republic in the wake of the devastating earthquake June 21.
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