WORLD IN BRIEF : IRAN : Rafsanjani Lowers Quake Death Toll
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
President Hashemi Rafsanjani toured quake-ravaged northwest Iran and said that the death toll from the June 21 temblor was less than 34,000, lower than first feared. “The figures were somewhat exaggerated in the villages,” Iran’s leader told Tehran Radio. His estimate contradicted one earlier in the day by Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, who told the U.N. Economic and Social Council in Geneva that 50,000 people were thought to have died.
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