Partial poll recount in Iran, riot police deployed

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran held a partial recount on Monday of its disputed election won by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but one defeated reformist candidate said annulment of the poll was "the only way to regain the people's trust."

In a sign that the process would not put into question Ahmadinejad's victory, IRNA news agency said recounting so far in one Tehran district gave him more votes than in the June 12 poll that unleashed the worst unrest since the 1979 revolution.

Witnesses reported an increased police presence in some Tehran squares ahead of the expected announcement of the recount outcome later on Monday. One witness saw dozens of riot police vehicles driving towards southern Tehran.

Pro-reform cleric Mehdi Karoubi, fourth in the official count, reiterated his call for the vote to be annulled in a letter to Iran's top legislative body, the Guardian Council, which is recounting a random 10 percent of the votes.

"The election's annulment is the only way to regain the people's trust," said Karoubi, in a position shared with defeated candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, who came second.

State media have said 20 people were killed in the aftermath of the election won by the hardline president, and authorities have accused Mousavi of responsibility for the bloodshed. He says the government is to blame.

Mass protests by demonstrators who said the poll was rigged were broken up by pro-government Basij militia and riot police. The demonstrations had echoes of the Islamic revolution that toppled the shah and exposed rifts in the clerical leadership.

The hardline rulers, locked in a row with the West over nuclear activity and who say the poll was fair, have also blamed the trouble on foreign powers rather than popular anger.

Reporting from different locations where recounting took place across the world's fifth biggest oil exporter, Iranian news agencies said representatives of Mousavi and Karoubi were not present even though they had been invited.

"This recount is being done before (state broadcaster) IRIB cameras in various provinces and cities and we will subsequently announce the outcome for public information. ... We will try to release the outcome by the end of working hours (on Monday)," the Council's spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai said.

Iran's state Press TV broadcast live from one Tehran district where a Guardian Council supervisor was quoted as saying the recount in this area showed no major irregularities.

The official told Press TV that 34 ballot boxes, representing 10 percent of the total in the district, had been opened under "full and precise supervision."

"The results were positive, no irregularities in the results announced," the official said.

RIOT POLICE DEPLOYED

A witness said riot police were deployed in force along a northern section of tree-lined Vali-ye Asr, Tehran's most famous boulevard. Relatively prosperous northern Tehran is a stronghold of Mousavi supporters.

In the northern city of Babolsar, the semi-official Fars News Agency said recounting there had not changed the result for any of the candidates.

Iranian authorities said on Monday five out of nine detained British embassy local staff had been released, while four others were being held for questioning. Britain has rejected accusations that the embassy helped to foment the mass rallies.

"Iran's action, first the expulsion of two diplomats and now the arrest of a number of our locally engaged staff, is unacceptable, unjustified and without foundation and we with our international partners will continue to make this clear," Prime Minister Gordon Brown told reporters in London.

"I would like to express my full solidarity with the United Kingdom. Intimidation and harassment are unacceptable," EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the reporters.

Ahmadinejad called for a judicial inquiry into what he called the "suspicious" shooting to death of music student Neda Agha-Soltan, who became a symbol of opposition protests after her death was broadcast on the Internet.

Last week, Britain's The Times newspaper identified one person captured on Internet videos helping Neda as a doctor who has since fled Iran. It quoted the man, 38-year-old Dr. Arash Hejazi, as saying she was killed by a government militiaman.

The president suggested that the opposition and Iran's enemies abroad aimed to misuse her death "for their own political aims and also to distort the pure and clean image of the Islamic Republic in the world."

(Reporting by Fredrik Dahl and Parisa Hafezi in Tehran and Kate Kelland in London; Writing by Peter Millership; Editing by Dominic Evans; London World Desk, +44 20 7542 7917)