Defiant Ahmadinejad defends controversial VP pick

TEHRAN (AFP) – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defiantly defended on Wednesday his appointment of controversial aide Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie as first vice president, saying he liked him for "1,000 reasons."

Iranian hardliners and clerics are pressuring Ahmadinejad to reverse the appointment of Rahim Mashaie, whose daughter is married to the president's son, after he enraged them last year for making pro-Israel comments.

Ahmadinejad however has not shown any sign of backing down and on Wednesday came in bold support of Rahim Mashaie, saying he was proud of him.

"I like Rahim Mashaie for 1,000 reasons. One of the biggest honours of my life and one of the biggest favours from God to me is knowing Rahim Mashaie," Ahmadinejad said.

"He is like a pure source of water," the president said in an address at a farewell function for the aide after he officially resigned from his position as vice president in charge of tourism to take up his new post.

"One of the reasons to like him is that when you sit with him and talk, there is no distance with him. He is like a transparent mirror. Unfortunately not many people know him," the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

The president said that Rahim Mashaie had done "big things" in the past four years and had again accepted a role in the new government.

"I saw the aggression against him (from hardliners). I asked the reason for this, but did not get any response," he added.

The appointment of Rahim Mashaie has deepened the political turmoil in Iran which is still reeling under sustained protests by the opposition movement against the re-election of Ahmadinejad as president last month.

Rahim Mashaie, an outspoken figure, last year earned the wrath of many, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for saying Iran was a "friend of the Israeli people."

Resistance to his appointment, including from some of Ahmadinejad's own supporters, is a sign of the the difficulties the president is likely to face in forming a new cabinet in the wake of the disputed presidential election.

But a top Ahmadinejad aide said on Wednesday the hardline Ahmadinejad was not known to bow to pressure.

"The president takes decisions independently... and experience has shown that his decisions are not affected by propaganda," Ali Akbar Javanfekr told ILNA.

But he also did not rule out opposition to Rahim Mashaie?s appointment having a negative impact on the new cabinet being approved.

Rahim Mashaie on Tuesday insisted he will stay on in his new job, adding that the task ahead was "huge and tiring."

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, meanwhile, said senior technocrats, managers and other professionals were not keen to work with the new government of Ahmadinejad.

"You are facing a government which the elite do not want to work with, and on the other hand the government too is not interested in using the experience of the elite," ILNA cited Mousavi as saying.

"This will result in a lack of efficiency and legitimacy, which can increase domestic and foreign problems," he said, addressing academics and journalists.

"The only way out of this crisis is to pay attention to the people's interests, which can provide the ground for politics to flourish."

Despite a severe post-poll crackdown on his supporters, Mousavi has remained defiant in protesting against Ahmadinejad's re-election, calling it a "shameful fraud."

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tehran after last month's election to demonstrate against Ahmadinejad's victory, and in the ensuing violence at least 20 people were killed.

The massive outpouring of public protest has shaken the pillars of the Islamic republic and triggered its worst crisis since the 1979 revolution.