Iran’s new president snubs Kurds

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 06 – Iran’s President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad harshly turned down demands by Kurdish members of the Majlis (Parliament) to include Iranian Kurds in his cabinet, a Kurdish deputy said after meeting Ahmadinejad. Mohammad Karimian, a deputy from the Kurdish region of Sardasht and Piranshahr in western Iran, was … Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Jul. 06 – Iran’s President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad harshly turned down demands by Kurdish members of the Majlis (Parliament) to include Iranian Kurds in his cabinet, a Kurdish deputy said after meeting Ahmadinejad.

Mohammad Karimian, a deputy from the Kurdish region of Sardasht and Piranshahr in western Iran, was speaking to reporters after a Kurdish delegation met Ahmadinejad in his temporary office in the Iranian parliament.

“In the meeting, we suggested the names of Kurds who were suitable be included in Ahmadinejad’s cabinet and we told him that, in light of events in Iraq and the election of a Kurd as President, it was imperative for him to invite Kurds to take part in the cabinet”.

Ahmadinejad was quoted by the Majlis deputy as having abruptly replied, “Don’t try to prod me with talk of Iraqi Kurdistan! I don’t take them as a model”.

Kurds, one of the largest minority groups in Iran, have long suffered under Iran’s clerical regime.

Kurdish sources and other Iranian opposition groups have said that Ahmadinejad was involved in the suppression of ethnic Kurds in Iran as a top commander in the Revolutionary Guards’ Ramezan Garrison in western Iran in the 1980s and as the security adviser to the governor-general of Kurdistan Province.

Austrian officials said this week that they were investigating Ahmadinejad’s alleged role in the 1989 assassination of a prominent Iranian Kurd in Vienna.