Yesterday, the government of [Atal Bihari] Vajpayee in India fell after losing a vote by a single vote. Mr. [Gholamreza] Aghazadeh, [head of the Atomic Energy Organization], reported that years of sustained efforts to achieve one of the objectives of the nuclear program had finally borne fruit, and that its first product had been obtained.
Yesterday, the government of [Atal Bihari] Vajpayee in India fell after losing a vote by a single vote. Mr. [Gholamreza] Aghazadeh, [head of the Atomic Energy Organization], reported that years of sustained efforts to achieve one of the objectives of the nuclear program had finally borne fruit, and that its first product had been obtained. I attended to my work until eleven.
The Board of Directors of the National Iranian Gas Company came. Mr. [Hamdollah] Mohammadnejad, [Managing Director of the National Iranian Gas Company], gave a report and said that daily natural gas production capacity had reached 195 million cubic meters. About 50 million cubic meters is being injected, while the remainder is used as fuel and by the petrochemical industries. The 40-inch gas pipeline will reach the Turkish border by September. He said that no new gas production project had been initiated since I left office and that the country would remain indebted for years to the measures I had taken to develop the gas industry.
Mr. Masih Mohajeri, [managing editor of Islamic Republic newspaper], came. He expressed surprise at yesterday’s remarks by Mr. [Seyyed Mohammad] Khatami, [President], to a gathering of provincial governors, saying that they amounted to opposition to the Leader’s policy concerning the press. He asked me to complete my unfinished interview with the newspaper and said he intended to write an article about the improper way Faezeh had been treated [following the closure of Zan newspaper]. He suggested that I take action regarding the next Parliament so that neither the left nor the right would gain control of it. He reported that a letter from four clerics in Qom had reached Mr. Khatami, protesting the government’s cultural and economic policies, and that Mr. Khatami’s harsh remarks were partly related to this issue. He said there was intense conflict between the right and left factions in the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution over the press, and that Mr. Nateq [Nouri, Speaker of Parliament]’s remarks in Mazandaran and part of Mr. Khatami’s remarks were related to this dispute.
In the afternoon, Mr. [Abolqasem] Vafi Yazdi came and gave a report on the views prevailing in the Qom seminary. He said that some clerics and many Iraqi refugee-returnee seminarians were indifferent toward the Revolution, while the morale of the younger seminarians was good. Four senior religious authorities, Messrs. [Lotfollah] Safi, [Nasser] Makarem [Shirazi], [Seyyed Musa] Shobeiri [Zanjani], and [Mohammad] Fazel [Lankarani], had established a joint meeting, and their first action had been to send a four-signatory letter to the Leader protesting the government’s cultural and economic situation, which Ayatollah Khamenei had also passed on to Mr. Khatami. He said several people had recently been added to the Society of Seminary Scholars of Qom, including himself and Mr. Seyyed Ahmad Khatami, and that following Mr. [Ebrahim] Amini’s resignation as Secretary, the Society was without a secretary. He said the remarks of [Seyyed Hossein] Mousavi Tabrizi, who had claimed that 90 percent of the clerics in Qom shared Mr. [Mohsen] Kadivar’s views, had been discussed in the Society, which intended to issue a response.
Mr. [Abdolmajid] Maadikhah, [director of the Foundation for the History of the Islamic Revolution], came to follow up on the Foundation’s subsidy and complained that it was being paid late. Recently, someone had filed a complaint concerning the Foundation’s land, which was supposed to be developed as a source of income, and had brought the construction work to a halt.
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