HEAD OF IRAN'S JUDICIARY CRITICIZES AHMADINUTJOB

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Top Iran cleric makes rare criticism of government Top Iran cleric makes rare criticism of government

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Iran's judiciary chief has publicly criticised President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for needlessly changing top officials, in a rare intervention in politics by one of Iran's most respected clerics.

The criticism by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, reported by the media on Thursday, comes in the same week that the president unexpectedly replaced his oil and industry ministers, amid continued economic problems in Iran.

"Unfortunately, the treatment of some managers is the source of heavy blows to the Iranian system," Shahroudi said in a speech to the Iranian audit court Wednesday reported by the ISNA news agency and picked up by all moderate newspapers.

"If we repeatedly change managers and ministers, nothing will improve," he said. "It should not be done in a way that if we want to groom an eyebrow we end up by poking out the eye," Shahroudi commented, using a traditional Persian proverb.

Ahmadinejad's critics have accused the president of promoting politicians from his own circle and comrades from his days as a Revolutionary Guard at the expense of more capable technocratic officials. Since he came to power in August 2005, a host of mid- to high-ranking officials have been replaced in sensitive ministries, most notably foreign affairs and oil.

The departure on Sunday of Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh as oil minister and Ali Reza Tahmasebi at industry was seen by analysts as an attempt by Ahmadinejad to increase his control over economic policy-making.

Ayatollah Shahroudi is one of the most respected clerics in Iran and is renowned for his depth of knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh).

Moderate newspapers seized on his comments as a highly unusual criticism of the government by a cleric of such a high rank. "Unprecedented criticism by the head of the judiciary," said the Tehran Emrouz in its headline. "No-one could have expected that Sharoudi would list the criticism of the current government without any restraint," said an article in the Etemad newspaper.

"This is the first time that Shahroudi has talked frankly about the weak points of the current situation," it added. Shahroudi said that before his resignation Vaziri Hamaneh had explained to him that less oil deals were being sealed as officials were concerned about adverse reactions from new supervisory boards.

"We should not treat managers in such a way that they become discouraged," Shahroudi said. The judiciary chief complained that such management had in the last years meant that Iran lost out badly in foreign investment deals.

"In the past two-three years we were able to ink five billion dollars of deals but other nations in the region were able to ink 400 billion dollars. This means we lost a fortune and let them (foreign rivals) have it," he said.

Shahroudi's commemts were made on the same day Iranian media revealed that Tahmasebi had made a stinging attack on Ahmadinejad in his resignation letter, complaining of damaging personnel changes in his ministry.

Ahmadinejad has been criticised across the political spectrum in Iran for the country's high inflation and ploughing extra revenues from high crude oil prices into high-spending infrastructure projects.