AFP: The United States is still looking into the past of Iran’s president-elect Mahmood Ahmadinejad, and the White House said Friday it would not be surprised if accusations that he took part in the 1979 US hostage crisis in Tehran were true. “We continue to look into it and establish all the facts. I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone if it turns out to be true,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

AP: If the newly elected Iranian president turns out to have been a main participant in the holding of American hostages in Tehran, he won’t be the first top Iranian official with a role in the 1979 crisis.
The current Iranian environment minister, Massoumeh Ebtekar, was the chief interpreter and spokeswoman for the radical students who took over the U.S. Embassy and held 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days.

The Times: The Bush Administration is investigating allegations
by former US hostages in Iran that the country’s newly elected President was one of the student leaders responsible for holding them captive 25 years ago.
In a move that could have serious diplomatic repercussions, the White House said that the allegations had “raised many questions” about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s past and that it was “looking into the facts”.

International Herald Tribune: A new cloud appeared over the U.S. relationship with Iran on Thursday as President George W. Bush said a host of questions had been raised by allegations by several former American hostages that the president-elect of Iran was among their captors after radicals seized the American Embassy in 1979.

AFP: The US government on Thursday renewed a warning against travel to Iran, saying anti-US hostility had increased the threat of kidnapping. But a State Department official said the warning was not linked to growing controversy over the past of Iran’s president-elect, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, who has been accused of taking part in the 1979 hostage taking at the US embassy in Tehran.

AFP: Allegations that Iran’s president-elect played a key role in the 1979 US embassy takeover in Tehran has given new impetus to a House of Representatives bill slapping sanctions on the regime. House lawmakers on Thursday gave renewed support to The Iran Freedom Support Act, introduced by Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The legislation, introduced by Ros-Lehtinen in January, already had 250 co-sponsors before the revelations, but the number of backers rose to over 300 after revelations that Iran’s hardliner president-elect, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, may have played a role as a hostage taker.

AFP: The United States pressed Iran Thursday to come clean over the past of its new president-elect, amid charges he played a key role in taking US diplomats hostage in Tehran 26 years ago. The State Department issued the call after President George W. Bush said the accusation leveled by five former hostages against Iranian hardliner Mahmood Ahmadinejad “raises many questions.”

Reuters: President George W. Bush said on Thursday he
wanted answers on whether Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a leader in the 1979 U.S. Embassy siege as some former hostages have said.
Several of the Americans who were held said they recognized
the ultraconservative Tehran mayor — who was elected president in a landslide on Friday — as a ringleader in the hostage-taking.

AFP: US President George W. Bush said Thursday that the charge that Iran’s hardline president-elect was a key player in the dramatic 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran “raises many questions.”
Five survivors of the 444-day siege of the embassy have said they remember seeing Ahmadinejad, while Iranian veterans of the embassy standoff have denied that the hardliner was involved.