Ttfe Tar Hee&Thurstfeyr dtne 8,19893
Search for Khomeinis successor underway
From Associated Press reports
NICOSIA, Cyprus President Ali
Khamenei is Iran's caretaker leader,
but the true successor to the late
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has yet
to be chosen.
The transfer of power may be re
solved Aug. 18, when a presidential
election is scheduled in tandem with
a referendum on constitutional
changes aimed at eliminating a sys
tem of competitive power centers that
has snarled decision-making.
Khamenei, 49, was chosen Sun
day by the 83-member assembly
formed after Khomeini's fundamen
talist Shiite Moslem revolution in
1979 to determine the succession and
write the new constitution.
Khamenei acknowledged his tem
porary role and said that, when the
constitutional changes have been rati
fied, "we should be able to fill the
vacuum" caused by Khomeini's death.
Reports from Tehran indicate Iran
will have a collective leadership of
three to five men in the absence of a
single figure with Khomeini's reli
gious and political authority.
In order for that to happen, the
20-member committee Khomeini
assigned to reform the constitution
will have to change the religious re
quirements for leadership to allow
lower-ranking figures to participate.
Most analysts believe the power
struggle of rival factions and leaders
will intensify.
Here are sketches of some of the
main candidates for a collective lead
ership: Hashemi Rafsanjani: The 55-year-old
speaker of parliament, a
middle-ranking cleric, also is mili
tary commander-in-chief.
With Khamenei's support,
Rafsanjani sought to improve rela
tions with the West and end Iran's
isolation. He was a key figure in per
suading Khomeini to accept the U Jsf.
sponsored cease-fire that halted fight
ing in the 8-year-old war with Iraq
last August He is the only declared
candidate for president.
Ali Akbar Mohtashemi: The
interior minister, 43, is among the
most radical hardliners. As ambassa
dor to Syria in 1981-1985, he was
closely linked to the Shiite funda
mentalist Hezbollah, or Party of God,
in Lebanon and considered by West
ern Intelligence to have masterminded
suicide bombings of American,
French and Israeli targets.
Hussein Musavi: The prime
minister, 48, is a radical who has led
the government since 1981. He sits
on the 12-member Council of Guardi
ans, which is dominated by conser
vatives and oversees all legislation,
and is a member of a special Expedi
ency Council appointed by Khomeini
in 1988 to resolve differences be
tween the parliament and Council of
Guardians.
Musavi Khoeiniha: The prosecutor-general,
47, is anti-Western and
known as "the red mullah" because
he studied at Patrice Lumumba Uni
versity in Moscow and Leipzig Uni
versity in East Germany.
Ahmad Khomeini: The late
patriarch's son, 43, has wielded con
siderable political influence behind
the scenes. He holds no office, but
controlled access to his increasingly
reclusive father and now is making
an open bid for power. He formerly
was allied with Rafsanjani, but now
is aligned with Mohtashemi and the
hard liners.
Death toll rises in Soviet gas explosion
From Associated Press reports
MOSCOW As many as 800
people may have died when gas leak
ing from a pipeline filled a mountain
valley, exploded and engulfed two
passing trains in flames, a newspaper
editor in the area said today.
In the first precise official report,
Tass said its preliminary count showed
400 of the more than 1,200 people
aboard the passenger trains, includ
ing many children bound for sum
mer camp, were dead or missing af
ter Sunday's explosion in the Ural
Mountains along the Trans-Siberian
Railroad.
"Military units are searching the
adjacent forest and mountains in the
hope that some of the passengers man
aged to escape the tornado of fire,"
the official news agency said.
The blast was equivalent to the
explosion of 10,000 tons of TNT,
Gen. Mikhail Moiseyev, the Soviet
military chief of staff, told Tass.
President Mikhail S. Gorbachev,
who visited the remote site Sunday,
told the new Soviet parliament "a
few hundred people" had been killed.
He said incompetence and a lack of
discipline might have contributed to
the accident
Gennady K. Dmitrin, editor of
Evening Chelyabinsk, said his news
paper has a list of between 500 and
800 people dead. He said that list
was preliminary. Dmitrin said chil
dren under age 8 did not have train
tickets and therefore were not included
in the count Tass gave for the num
ber of people aboard.
Asked about the death toll given
by Dmitrin, Dr. Vladimir Ruchki, a
local Health Ministry spokesman said:
"It's about right" He said more than
600 people were hospitalized. Tass
said more than 500 people were hos
pitalized and that 85 percent suffered
severe burns.
Moiseyev told Tass the liquefied
gas explosion "had the same yield as
a 10,000-ton bomb and was so pow
erful that it felled all trees within 2.5
miles." He said the blast hurled two
locomotives and 38 passengers cars
from the rails, with most of the cars
destroyed by a one-mile-long blaze.
The total number of railroad cars was
not known.
In Moscow, speaking to Congress,
Gorbachev called for a minute of si
lence and the 2,250 deputies stood to
mourn the victims. Gorbachev then
recessed the session for a national
day of mourning.
The 58-year-old Soviet leader, in
remarks from the Kremlin's Palace
of Congresses broadcast live on ra
dio and television, said the 1,153 mile
long pipeline burst a half mile from
the rails. He said the liquefied petro
leum gas poured down a slope to
ward the tracks for three hours. De
spite the leak, pumps were turned on
to compensate for the pressure loss.
"Everything started to accumulate,
and when this mass reached the level
of electrical train contacts, a spark
ignited this condensed cloud," Gor
bachev told the deputies.
The two passenger trains trav
eling in opposite directions had
made unscheduled stops near each
other between the city of Ufa and the
town of Asha, 750 miles southeast of
Moscow. One train was on a siding,
and the other was on the main tracks,
the Soviet president indicated.
"How could it be that again there
is incompetence, irresponsibility,
mismanagement, disgrace? Comrades
and I, and all residents there, said
there will be no progress if we have
such laxness," Gorbachev said.
He said investigators would ex
amine why the gas pump was turned
on despite the leak and why the two
trains made unscheduled stops at the
same place.
It was the third major Soviet train
accident in a year and added to the
disasters during Gorbachev's 4-year-old
rule. They include the Chernobyl
nuclear power plant explosion, the
sinking of a cruise ship and a nuclear-armed
submarine, and the
Armenian earthquake.
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