White House in U-turn over Iran election remark

The White House spokesman has withdrawn comments which suggested that the US government had recognised Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s elected president despite popular protests against the vote result.

Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday that his comments a day earlier, in which he said Ahmadinejad had been “elected”, did not imply that Washington considered his re-election legitimate. “Let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday. I denoted that Ahmadinejad was the elected leader of Iran. I would say that is not for me to pass judgement on,” Gibbs said. “He has been inaugurated — that is a fact. Whether any election was fair, obviously the Iranians still have questions about that and we will let them decide.”

Gibbs’ fresh remarks came hours after Ahmadinejad was inaugurated as Iran’s president in a ceremony in Tehran, the Iranian capital.

Ahmadinejad’s rivals in the June 12 presidential poll questioned the veracity of the vote results and thousands of people protested across the country against the incumbent’s re-election.