Iran cleric’s mourners use occasion to protest

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Tens of thousands of Iranian mourners turned the funeral procession of the country’s most senior dissident cleric into an anti-government protest Monday, chanting “death to the dictator” and slogans in support of the opposition amid heavy security.

Crowds filled major streets, beating their chests in mourning, waving banners in the green colors of the opposition and shouting denunciations of Iran’s rulers as Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri’s body was carried to a shrine in Iran’s holy city of Qom.

Some mourners clashed briefly with security forces, throwing stones - and hardline pro-government militiamen charged some protesters until police held them back, opposition Web sites said. The militiamen tore down mourning banners and ripped to pieces posters of Montazeri near his home, the Hammihan Web site reported. Iranian authorities have barred foreign media from covering the rites.

The death of Montazeri on Sunday, at the age of 87, pushed Iranian authorities into a difficult spot. Theywere obliged to pay respects to one of the patriarchs of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the one-time heir apparent to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

But officials also worried that his mourning rites could give a new push to opposition protests, particularly because they coincide with a week of traditional rallies commemorating a revered Shiite martyr. Montazeri broke with Iran’s clerical leadership and became a vehement critic, denouncing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and calling the postelection crackdown the work of a dictatorship.

Mourners shouted “death to the dictator” and other slogans in displays of anger against Iran’s ruling establishment during the procession in Qom, a city of shrines and clerical seminaries about 60 miles south of Tehran, witnesses said. The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of arrest.

Marchers held aloft black rimmed portraits of Montazeri and green banners and wristbands in a powerful show of support for the Green Movement of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who attended the funeral along with another prominent protest leader, Mahdi Karroubi.

Footage posted on the Web showed crowds chanting in the streets of Qom and beating their chests in a sign of mourning, as Montazeri’s body was carried in a coffin draped in black cloth around the city’s main shrine several times, then taken to a nearby cemetery for burial alongside his son, who died in the early days of the Islamic Revolution.

Security forces clashed with mourners shouting slogans outside Montazeri’s house in Qom, and some protesters threw stones, the opposition Web site Norouz reported. It said an unspecified number of mourners were arrested. The report could not be independently confirmed, and witnesses did not report major clashes.

Some reformist sites reported that Mousavi’s car was attacked as he left Qom and at least one member of his entourage was injured. The reports could not be independently confirmed.

Elsewhere on Monday, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator called for a global nuclear weapons ban but insisted all nations - including his own - have the right to develop nuclear energy.

Visiting Tokyo to meet with senior Japanese officials, Saeed Jalili said his country’s nuclear program is for civilian purposes, although the U.S. and other nations fear its goal is to produce weapons.

“The crime that was committed in Hiroshima must never be repeated,” Jalili said at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, referring to the United States’ dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II.

“All the efforts of the world should be directed toward the eradication of these weapons,” he said.

The administration of President Barack Obama - who has also called for a world free of nuclear weapons - has given a rough deadline of the year’s end for Iran to respond to an offer of engagement and show that it would allay world concerns about its nuclear program.

At the same time that it is trying to engage with Iran, the Obama administration has also been building momentum toward imposing more sanctions after the revelation in September that Iran was secretly building a second uranium-enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom.

In Paris on Monday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the international community has no other choice but to impose new U.N. sanctions on Iran for its refusal to cooperate on its nuclear program.

Kouchner said Russia was already “on board” with the need for sanctions, and that he believed “the Chinese will follow.”

“I think there is no other solution,” Kouchner told journalists.

America’s top military officer agreed Monday that Tehran shows no sign of backing down in the standoff and said that military force must therefore remain an option.

“My belief remains that political means are the best tools to attain regional security and that military force will have limited results,” Adm. Mike Mullen wrote in an annual assessment of the nation’s risks and priorities.

“However, should the president call for military options, we must have them ready.”

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, emphasized to television network ABC on Monday, however, that “sanctions have to be tried before we explore the last option,” such as a military attack.

For now, the U.S. and its allies are pressing Tehran to accept a U.N.-brokered plan under which Iran would ship the majority of its low-enriched uranium out of the country. That would temporarily leave Iran without enough uranium stockpiles to enrich further to produce a nuclear weapon.

Under the plan, the lowenriched uranium would be converted into fuel rods that would be returned to Iran for use in a research reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes.

Fuel rods cannot be further enriched into weaponsgrade material.

Also Monday, Iran’s foreign minister said he expects a speedy trial for three American hikers jailed since crossing the border from Iraq in July. The country’s president questioned the hikers’ intentions but said would do his best to free them.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki declined to specify what charges the Americans faced, but Iran’s chief prosecutor said last month the Americans are accused of spying.

“These Americans entered Iran illegally and with aims that arouse suspicions and doubts,” Mottaki said at a press conference in Beirut on Monday.

“We expect appropriate sentences to be issued very soon,” he added.

Josh Fattal, 27, along with Shane Bauer, 27, and Sarah Shourd, 31 - all graduates of the University of California at Berkeley - had been trekking in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region when they accidentally crossed the border, according to their families.

Information for this article was contributed by Zeina Karam, Anne Gearan and Deborah Seward of The Associated Press.