Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi - July 1, 2001 - Hashemi's Account of Ebrahim Asgharzadeh's Proposal to Mohsen Hashemi to Accept the Position of Mayor of Tehran and His Rejection

Full Text of the Daily Entry:

I spent the day at home studying and resting. I devoted a lot of time to reading Mourning Whispers, the memoirs of a migrant to the Soviet Union. Mr. [Asad] Mostofi provided an account of the circumstances leading to the formation of the government of Ja'far Pishevari, his failure, and the escape of 25,000 people to the Soviet Union, along with the events and difficulties of this migration.

Last night, the Serbian government handed over [Slobodan] Milosevic, the former president of Serbia, to the [International Criminal Tribunal] in The Hague. The president and the Socialist Party, along with many people, protested, and he responded that some European governments had conditioned their participation in a meeting that was supposed to be held today to aid Yugoslavia on his handover. The United States, Germany, and the UK, along with Kofi Annan, the [Secretary-General of the United Nations], welcomed this decision, while Russia protested. [Zoran Djindjic], the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia responsible for the handover, was forced to resign. Milosevic will be tried for the crimes committed by Serbs in Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere. The constitutional court of Yugoslavia declared the handover to be against the constitution.

[Colin Powell], the U.S. Secretary of State, agreed to the deployment of UN forces near Palestine to advance negotiations in Palestine; he had previously opposed it but made it conditional upon Israel's acceptance, which he likely knows they will not agree to. It was announced that there has been progress on halting violence and a ceasefire agreement, although there were clashes today. Hezbollah in Lebanon attacked Israeli troops in the [Shebaa] Farms, and Israel immediately bombarded southern Lebanon in response.

Ebrahim Ghosheh, the spokesman for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), who had been stranded at Amman Airport in Jordan for two weeks, flew to Thailand, but [Abdullah II], the King of Jordan, granted him permission to enter his country and stated that Ghosheh had committed not to cooperate with Hamas in Jordan.

Mohsen, [the chairman and CEO of the Tehran Urban and Suburban Railways (Metro)], said that Mr. [Ebrahim] Asgharzadeh, a member of the Tehran City Council, had asked him to accept the position of Mayor of Tehran, but he declined.