Iran emergency session ordered

TEHRAN, Iran -- A top Iranian state council will meet in emergency session Monday to resolve a crisis delaying President Mohammad Khatami's inauguration.

The country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered the Expediency Council to hold an extraordinary meeting to discuss the crisis. The council, controlled by Khamenei, has the final say on political disputes.

Khatami, Iran's resoundingly re-elected president, was to have been formally sworn-in on Sunday. But Khamenei postponed the ceremony on Saturday because of a constitutional crisis that pitted conservative leaders against the country's reform-minded parliament.

In a letter sent to the speaker of Iran's parliament late Saturday, Khamenei said the ceremony should be postponed until ambiguities in the constitution -- specifically, the ground rules under which a person can be authorized as president -- can be ironed out.

On Sunday, he wrote the head of the Expediency Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, ordering the emergency meeting.

"Given the delay in the president's swearing-in ceremony, it is necessary to hold an extraordinary session as soon as possible for a final solution," Khamenei wrote.

Rafsanjani immediately responded by calling on Expediency Council members to attend a meeting on Monday evening.

Khamenei confirmed Khatami -- who won a landslide victory in the June 8 election -- as president for a second four-year term on Thursday. But that was only half of a two-part confirmation process, which also requires a civil confirmation -- the process that hit a snag Saturday.

According to Iran's constitution, members of the watchdog Guardian Council and other officials, including members of parliament and the head of the judiciary, must attend the civil confirmation.

The Guardian Council consists of 12 members, six of whom are high clerics appointed by supreme leaders and another six who are lawyers nominated by the head of the judiciary branch. The council has a staggered election system so that not all of the seats come up for election at the same time.

Three seats on the Guardian Council were up for election Saturday, and the parliament voted Saturday afternoon on a list of candidates submitted by the judiciary.

But the parliament approved only one name, leaving the Guardian Council with 10 members -- not the full 12.

That threw the presidential confirmation process into crisis, since the constitution does not specify how many members of the council must be at the presidential swearing-in ceremony -- only that the council itself must be present.

The parliament had hoped 10 council members would suffice, but Khamenei disagreed.

The vote in parliament highlighted a political rivalry between the reformist-dominated parliament and the conservative-dominated judiciary, which presented the list of candidates. Parliament members said all six names on the list were too young, too inexperienced and too right-wing.

Both the parliament and the judiciary are obliged to accept the Expediency Council's decision.

-- Journalist Shirzad Bozorgmehr contributed to this report