[Al Arabiya Latest] Powerful cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani urged Iran's warring political groups on Saturday to follow the orders of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for ending the present political turmoil.In his first such statement in direct support of Khamenei since the June 12 election, the former president said "the current situation needs everyone to observe the leader's decrees and advice," Iranian news agencies reported.
Rafsanjani was speaking at the start of a meeting of Iran's top political arbitration body, the Expediency Council, which he heads.
He urged the bitterly divided groups to create "appropriate conditions to act and commit to the constitution ... and confront law breakers, whatever their ideological leanings."
Women ministers
Meanwhile, several Iranian conservative clerics have objected to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's decision to include three women in his new cabinet, a newspaper reported on Saturday as a court decided to ban a controversial presidential aid from public office for two months.
Ahmadinejad named Sousan Keshvaraz, Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi and Fatemeh Ajorlou as his ministers respectively of education, health and welfare, and social security in his 21-member cabinet line-up. "Although it is a new idea to choose women as ministers, there are religious doubts over the abilities of women when it comes to management. This should be considered by the government," Mohammad Taghi Rahbar, the head of the clerics' faction in the conservative-dominated Iranian parliament was quoted as saying by the daily Tehran Emrouz.