Voting starts in high-stakes Iranian presidential run-off

TEHRAN, Friday (AFP,Reuters) Polling stations opened across Iran on Friday for a high-stakes presidential election run-off between religious hardliner Mahmood Ahmadinejad and relative moderate Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Rafsanjani, seen as a pragmatic conservative, is a regime veteran espousing closer ties with the West and economic liberalisation. Ahmadinejad is a self-described "fundamentalist" seeking a return to the moral "purity" of the early days of the Islamic revolution.

The unprecedented two-man run-off was forced after the June 17 first round saw none of the seven contenders win a majority of the votes.

The outcome appears too close to call.

In the first round on June 17, Rafsanjani won 21 percent of the vote and Ahmadinejad won 19.5 percent. Meanwhile Iran said it had arrested 26 people, including at least one military figure, for suspected electoral violations ahead of an unpredictable presidential run-off vote. The arrests appeared to lend some credence to reformist charges that an inconclusive first round vote on June 17 was marred by dirty tricks.

Supporters of Rafsanjani, 70, who is bidding to regain the post he held from 1989 to 1997, say a win for Ahmadinejad would roll back outgoing President Mohammad Khatami's modest reforms and could lead Iran into international isolation.

Khatami voiced fresh concern on Thursday about electoral "irregularities" and called on officials to confront them.

"It has been heard that some have attempted to influence people ... by creating fear and threats in the society," he said in a letter to the ministers of justice, interior and intelligence, state media said. "Reports suggest that some organisations in charge of identifying such irregularities are themselves committing them," he added, without specifying which bodies he was referring to.

Citing an Interior Ministry statement, the official IRNA news agency said 104 cases of electoral violations had been recorded in the first round of elections, leading to 26 arrests.