Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – September 20, 2003

In Iraq, an assassination attempt was made on the life of Mrs. Aqila Hashemi, a member of the Governing Council, with several bullets. It was announced that her condition is critical. In Baghdad, Mosul, Samarra and Fallujah, the Americans were attacked with casualties, and Sultan Hashim [al-Tai], Iraq’s defense minister, has also surrendered himself to the occupiers, and it has been said that during the war, he served the United States.

Turkey’s National Security Council opposed sending Turkish military forces to Iraq. The defeat of the British Labour Party in a by-election has been interpreted as a loss of that party’s credibility. The British court that released [Hadi] Soleimanpour, [former Iranian ambassador to Argentina], has set the trial for five weeks from now. In Afghanistan, an explosion near the U.S. military base in Bagram left eight dead and a number of people wounded.

In the eastern United States, Hurricane Isabel, which in recent days caused extensive destruction in South Korea and Japan, has caused the deaths of 21 people and billions of dollars in damage.  

Mr. Mohsen Rafiqdoust, [head of the Noor Foundation and member of the board of trustees of Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom], came. He said the government had not paid the money it was supposed to pay for Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom and appealed for help in implementing the Expediency Discernment Council’s resolution.

Mr. Fouad Sadeghi, director of the Baztab website, came. He said they have 32 thousand visitors a day and are more widely visited than all Iranian websites. He denied the rumors that the site belongs to Mr. Mohsen Rezaei. He had suggestions for reducing tensions, through the resignation or removal of extremists on the left and right.

Mr. [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, mayor of Tehran, came. He explained a number of the municipality’s important programs for solving the traffic problem; including continuing the highways that have remained unfinished because of military barracks and creating many parking lots to remove cars from the streets and restructuring some intersections [by creating U-turns] and eliminating red lights and extending Yadegar-e Emam toward the south and north and building two monorail rings and putting underground the two railway lines that are in southern Tehran; to turn the space above them into a highway. He asked me to tell Mr. [Ali] Abdolalizadeh, [minister of housing and urban development], and [Ahmad] Khorram, [minister of roads and transportation], to cooperate. He asked me to tell Mr. [Bijan Namdar] Zanganeh, [minister of petroleum], to give the municipality some of the fuel savings that will result from the municipality’s program of replacing buses with many gas-powered ones. He said they intend to focus their attention on the facades of buildings and not interfere with people inside the buildings.

In the afternoon, Mr. [Gholamreza] Aghazadeh, [head of the Atomic Energy Organization], came. He gave a report on the negotiations with [Mohamed] ElBaradei, [director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency], as well as the agency’s new proposal. He has asked for explanations regarding the origin of the manufacture of the enrichment machines [= centrifuges] and the people who made them and the conversion into metallic uranium. I said to respond that cooperation would be provided within the framework of the NPT and also pursue cooperation with the three countries of Germany, France and Britain, based on their proposal with modifications.