WASHINGTON, June 21 (RIA Novosti) - U.S. President Barack Obama has urged the Iranian government to stop 'all violent and unjust actions" against its own people after a day of unrest across Tehran over last week's vote.
Iran has been swept by mass demonstrations over alleged ballot fraud in the landslide reelection of the hardline president on June 12. In Tehran, riot police used batons and fired teargas to disperse protesters.
"We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights," Obama said in a statement published by the White House.
Official results gave the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 63% of the vote, with reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi getting 34%.
Obama further said that suppressing ideas never succeeded in making them go away.
"The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion," the statement said.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday rejected the possibility that vote rigging affected the result of the country's presidential election and said that people's opinions should be expressed in elections, not on the street.
In his sermon for Friday prayers, he dismissed the possibility of electoral fraud by the state, and said Ahmadinejad's margin of victory, at more than 11 million votes, was too great for the election to have been stolen.
Meanwhile, defeated candidate Mousavi repeated calls for the election results to be annulled, saying that the elections had been fraudulent.
