Iran president declares a new era

France demands teacher's release
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, meanwhile, demanded the release of a young French academic detained after taking photos of Iranian protests and accused of espionage.

Clotilde Reiss, 23, was arrested last week at Tehran's airport as she was about to leave Iran after a five-month stay during which she taught French at Isfahan University.

"These accusations of espionage are high fantasy," Sarkozy said at a news conference Tuesday.

Iran's hard-line leaders have been trying to erase any lingering doubts about the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's government by portraying the unrest as sparked by foreign meddling.

In his speech Tuesday, the president criticized his election rivals and accused them of working with Iran's enemies.

"Unfortunately, some people inside Iran collaborated with them. They repeated the remarks made by certain Western countries," Ahmadinejad said, as he accused the West of interfering in the country's politics.

"The result of their childish acts of interference in Iran's internal affairs is that the Iranian nation and government will enter the global stage several times more powerful," he said.

U.N. experts express concern
Also Tuesday, six U.N. human rights experts issued a statement expressing "grave concern about reports of killings, ongoing arrests, use of excessive police force and the ill-treatment of detainees." They questioned the legality of the arrests of journalists and demonstrators, who could face "arbitrary detentions."

Despite the regime's rhetoric, a number of top clerics have continued to question the election — a rare defiance of the supreme leader from the ranks of the religious establishment.

This week, a party close to one of the most politically powerful clerics — former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — issued a statement rejecting Ahmadinejad's victory. It was one of the strongest hints yet on the powerful cleric's stance. He is the head of two major clerical ruling bodies and is a bitter enemy of Ahmadinejad, but has kept his distance from the postelection turmoil.

"Due to the unhealthy trend of the election, widespread irregularities and the support extended by a majority of Guardian Council members to a specific candidate, the result of this election is not acceptable," the Kargozaran party said in its statement, published on Mousavi's Web site.

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