DATE=8/3/1999 TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT TITLE=KHATAMI ANNIVERSARY NUMBER=5-43994 BYLINE=ALI JALALI DATELINE=WASHINGTON INTERNET=YES CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: This week (Aug 3), Iranian President Mohammad Khatami completes his second year in office. Elected on a reform mandate, the moderate cleric was believed by many people inside and outside Iran to embody the aspirations of a growing movement for change in the country. But, as V-O-A's Ali Jalali reports, two years after his inauguration, Mr. Khatami's reform agenda faces increasing opposition from conservative forces in the ruling clergy. TEXT: The closing days of President Khatami's second year in office saw the worst social unrest in Iran since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution. Last month's week-long demonstrations by pro-reform students and the brutal suppression of those demonstrations by the police and hardline vigilantes capped a long-standing struggle between opposing factions in Iran. The showdown pitted pro-Khatami reformists against right-wing clerics clustered around the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei. Relying on their control of most of the state institutions - including the parliament, the judiciary, the Army and the security forces - the conservatives have sought, for the most part successfully, to impede the growing campaign for democratic changes. With most public institutions controlled by the conservatives, the moderates have reacted by pursuing their efforts for reform in the emerging independent press and through public rallies and demonstrations. The recent student unrest was sparked by efforts of conservative parliamentarians to impose new restrictions on the pro-reform press. It was these restrictions that provoked the student demonstrations that the police suppressed. Geoffrey Kemp, the director of Regional Strategic Programs at the Nixon center (in California), says the student demonstrations and the government crackdown that followed served as a wake up call for both sides. /// KEMP ACT /// Both Mr. Khatami and the conservative opposition were very shaken by the recent events in Tehran -- both the student unrest and the brutal suppression of the students by the vigilante forces. And my guess is that both the moderates and the conservatives are reassessing their positions at this time and probably have decided they don't want to see this issue come to another confrontation at any time soon because both sides will lose. /// END ACT /// Following last month's unrest, President Khatami renewed his election pledge to promote social reforms and the building of civil society. However, he criticized the way the student demonstrations developed into street riots in Tehran. The campaign for political development, he stressed, should not undermine the rule of law and the underlying principles of the Islamic revolution. Critics say that Mr. Khatami slowed the momentum of the reformist movement by joining the conservatives in suppressing the pro-reform demonstrations. According to the critics, while the Khatami government says it wants change, it is really working to reinforce the clerical system and not to dismantle it. A recent editorial in a U-S paper, the Boston Globe, says that like the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr. Khatami plainly wishes to save the faltering political order by reforming it. Patrick Clawson of Washington Institute for Near East Policy says the comparison between the two leaders makes a lot of sense. /// CLAWSON ACT /// I certainly think that President Khatami like President Gorbachev is completely committed to the system, to the Islamic republic, and his goal is very much to strengthen the Islamic Republic. And the big question is whether or not in the end the opening that Khatami is engaged in will result in the collapse of the system or will instead strengthen the system. /// END ACT /// But French analyst and a long-time Iran watcher Olivier Roy cautions against drawing parallels between Khatami's Iran and Gorbachev's former Soviet Union. He says unlike Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Khatami is the people's choice and not an insider. Further, he says, there is a consensus among all factions about the validity of certain aspects of Iran's Islamic revolution, which are going to survive any reform. /// ROY ACT /// In the Soviet Union there was no civil society, there were no elections, no freedom of press and things like that. In Iran at the time of the election of President Khatami there was a certain freedom of expression and there were elections so we have a political scene in Iran, we have political space which didn't exist in the Soviet Union. /// END ACT /// Mr. Khatami has supported democratic changes in Iran without changing the rule of law. He favors building a civil society through peaceful campaign and political persuasion. Therefore, say his supporters, during the past two years, he has had to walk a tight rope between public demand for change and anti-reform resistance by the ruling conservative clergy. Many analysts of the Iranian political scene argue that acts of reform, no matter how modest they may be, will eventually chip away at the conservative power in the system. They say, it is going to be a slow and incremental process. Geoffrey Kemp says this assumption - bringing change slowly -- constitutes the basis of Khatami's reform strategy, but he questions whether it will work. /// KEMP ACT /// It is difficult to see how you can have a pluralistic democracy with all the freedoms Mr. Khatami is talking about while at the same time relying on a system of government that gives supreme authority to Mr. Khamenei who only takes his directions from God. And this whole issue of the power of the Supreme Leader is the essence of the debate about the Iranian constitution and the future of the Islamic Republic. /// END ACT /// Mr. Kemp says economic reform in Iran is even a more urgent issue than democratic reform. However, he adds, no profound recovery can be achieved without political and legal adjustments that attract foreign investment and thereby diminishes the power of stagnant state-owned conglomerates (Bonyads). Looking ahead, analysts see no immediate changes in Iran's power structure. The reformers seem unwilling to risk violent confrontation while the conservatives are cautious in using full force against those seeking reforms. But Geoffrey Kemp says the situation might change dramatically in the not too distant future. /// KEMP ACT /// I would say in the coming years, that is to say the next two-to-three years, there has to be a fundamental change in Iran away from the strict authoritarian, almost mediaeval beliefs of the conservatives. Because Iran's economy, Iran's youth, Iran's women all demand change. That is not to say however that in the immediate short run, the next two-to-three months or a year, there could not be a repression and the clock could be turned back. /// END ACT /// During the next six months, the opposing factions are expected to campaign intensely for next February's Majlis (parliament) elections. A major victory by reformers could lead to deeper changes through constitutional amendments. But there is no doubt conservatives will fight hard to maintain their control of the Majlis. (Signed) NEB/AJ/ 03-Aug-1999 12:54 PM EDT (03-Aug-1999 1654 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America .