TEHRAN Chairman of Expediency Council of Iran Hojjatoleslam Akbar Hashemi Rasfsanjani told thousands of worshipers at Friday congregational prayer here yesterday that Iran's enemies continue their subversive intentions by all means including ideological campaigns to prove that Islam cannot be relied upon as the foundation for a successful statehood.
He said they were trying to expose the Islamic Republic as a country entangled in problems and poverty mainly or solely as the result of an inefficient ideological sub-system.
He said the people, and especially the younger generation had to be reminded of the malicious ideological campaign of the country's enemies.
"This," he said, "Is not a behind the scene analysis of current affairs. Even now, they (Iran's enemies) venture to say such things at their open assemblies. And their print media say that religion does not work as the foundation of a political system.' Such schemes of theirs are not secrets that I should have found out as a personal discovery." Rafsanjani warned that in the event the enemies of the Islamic Republic should be suffered in their so doing they would eventually pull up the roots of the popular movement that instituted the Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979.
The chairman of the Expediency Council stressed that the national campaign against poverty and corruption that is now included on President Khatami's agenda, and which was also stressed by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei last month, had ranked high also in the agenda of his own administration when he was president.
He said reformation' and plans for improving national economy had always been on the agenda of all administrations in Iran.
He reminded that a religious system in Iran which had successfully managed all state affairs in the country during the war years as well as defended the territorial integrity of Iran would certainly be able to prove successful in the post-war years.
Hojjatoleslam Rafsanjani observed that the state should devise the ways and means for the healthy employment of the young unemployed generation by adopting economically sound and effective devices.
"Should this economic slump and this unemployment and idleness of national resources continue for some time in the future then we will not be able to argue our unemployed youth into believing that Islam can manage their personal affairs," warned Rafsanjani.
Elsewhere in his second sermon to worshipers as substitute leader of Friday congregational prayer Rafsanjani recalled the deadlocked Camp David II talks as an exemplary lesson for the world, for Palestinians and for frontline Arab nations.
He said the Muslim world should never trust Washington as an impartial go-between in talks with the Zionist regime.
"Palestinians," he said, "are entitled to the entirety of Palestine.
If there should be an extra expanse of land Jews, too, will (be suffered to) dwell thereon." (IRNA)