Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – May 4, 2003

Mr. [Mohammed Hossein] Rezaei, the head of the Hajj and Pilgrimage [Organization] came. He gave a report on the status of Hajj and Umrah and that due to the closure of the pilgrimage to Karbala, the pressure on Umrah has increased and the number of applicants may reach 500,000.  Mr. [Mohammed Mohammadi] Rishahri, [representative of the religious jurist and supervisor of Iranian pilgrims] is complaining;  Because he wrote a letter to him and asked him to leave and said that his continued work is not Shariah and legal, while Mr. [Syed Mohammad] Khatami wrote to him in response that it is Shariah and legally correct.
Mr. [Mohammed Ali] Kozegar, the representative of Shahriar, came.  He asked me to go there and thanked me for the recent interview and the establishment of Azad University in Shahriar and asked me to be more active in overcoming the crisis in the region.  Mr. [Mortaza] Bank, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs came.  He criticized the lack of proper activity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Iraq and believes that the weakness of Mr. Mohammad Sadr, [Deputy Arabic for Africa at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs] is the cause. He gave a report on the financial and administrative situation of the Ministry.  Sofra's salary is between 2800 and 4000 dollars.
In the evening, Mr. Hossein Hashemian came to Rafsanjan with a group of officials of the water transfer project from Bakhtiari mountains.  including Mr. Mohsen Hejri and his son and Mohammad Marashi, CEO of [Rafsanjan Construction Organization] and gave the report of studies, financial status, resources, solutions, costs, and incomes, and they requested me to help them to solve the problem of guaranteeing loans from abroad, and they thanked the government for the foundation of the work by allocating water to Rafsanjan.
[Colin] Powell, [US Secretary of State], after his trip to Syria and Lebanon, has said that Syria cooperates with restricting the Palestinian Mujahid groups, and Mrs. [Condolissa] Rice, the national security adviser of [George] Bush, has said with pride that the security of Israel is the key to the security of the world.!! 
In Kirkuk, an American soldier died and in Tikrit, America bombed a point and some schools in Basra and Baghdad have started working.  Desperate for the power of [Jay] Garner's administration, the United States has assigned a person named [Paul] Bremer from the State Department to handle Iraq's civilian affairs. 
Alima Qom Hozwa announced public mourning for the martyrdom of 172 Iraqi scholars and clerics who were martyred in the prisons of the late Baathist regime and who converted to Islam after the fall of Saddam [Hussein] and who are not alive. 
In most cities, cultural workers did not work in protest of the government's lack of attention to their demands.