Iranians voted for a new President on Friday, with moderate cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani seen just ahead in an unusually tight poll that Washington has dismissed as a sham.Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari, speaking before polls closed, said the contest would go into a second round.‘‘We will certainly have a run-off because the competition is very serious and candidates are very close to each other,’’ the ISNA students news agency quoted him as saying.To win outright, a candidate must get at least 50 per cent of votes cast. Any run-off would be probably be held next Friday.The Interior Ministry extended voting by four hours until 11 p.m. to give the 47 million eligible voters more time to cast ballots. Official results are due on Saturday.Rafsanjani (70), who wants better ties with the West, is a veteran politician who would be likely to pursue a pragmatic reform programme, liberalising the economy and conserving social freedoms without antagonising the powerful clerical elite. His nearest rivals are reformist former education minister Mostafa Moin (54), and conservative ex-police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf (43), with Tehran’s ex-mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerging as a dark-horse hardline contender.Keeping up a barrage of US criticism, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said democracy in Iran was moving backwards. President George W. Bush, who labelled Iran part of an axis of evil in 2002, attacked its ‘‘oppressive record’’. Iran denies US claims it seeks nuclear weapons and backs terrorism.Top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani said the next President would have less influence on Iran’s policy than the Americans and Europeans imagined because decisions on the nuclear issue must be agreed by all the country’s senior officials. —ReutersApathy, protests as Iranian expats votePARIS: Iranians living abroad trickled to voting stations on Friday amid apathy, protests and calls by exile Opposition groups to boycott Iran’s Presidential election. An estimated 3 million Iranians live outside Iran, over a third of them in the US and several hundred thousand in Europe. Many who cast ballots said they were voting for change. Consular officials said they expected only about 2,500 people to vote in Frankfurt, Bonn and Munich although there are about 100,000 Iranians in southern Germany. Iran said it would make arrangements for polling in 33 US cities but exile Opposition groups there fear the vote will be fraudulent. —Reuters
