Obama urges Iran to halt violence against protests

United States President Barack Obama urged Iran to halt all violence against protestors on Saturday, as Iranian police reportedly wounded about 50 people who rallied in open defiance of the Islamic Republic's government.

"The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost," Obama said in a statement released by the White House.

"We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people."

Obama has come under growing domestic pressure to speak out more forcefully on the protests in Iran over last week's disputed presidential election.

On Tuesday, the president said he shared the world's "deep concerns about the election" but asserted that it was "not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling."

He is believed to be wary of further alienating a hard-line Islamic regime he wants to dissuade from seeking nuclear weapons.

But Obama said on Saturday that "the universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights."

"As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government."

The president's comments came after both houses of the U.S. Congress approved a resolution on Friday condemning the ongoing violence by the Iranian government and its suppression of the Internet and cell phones.

In Saturday's statement, Obama added: "If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion."

Mass rally held in Paris to back Iran opposition

Earlier Saturday, Tens of thousands of supporters of an exiled Iranian opposition group rallied outside Paris to denounce the government in Tehran and last week's disputed presidential election.

Scores of chartered coaches brought supporters of the French-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) from countries including Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands to an organized event at an exhibition centre near Paris.

Supporters chanted slogans and waved yellow flags and banners reading "In support of the Iranian people". They gave an ecstatic greeting to the movement's leader Maryam Rajavi.

"The sacred rage that has exploded in the streets across Iran is different from all the previous demonstrations, protests and uprisings," Rajavi told the crowd, according to a translation of her speech.

"The religious dictatorship and all of its repressive institutions must be dismantled," she said.

Organizers said 90,000 people had travelled to the Villepinte area to support the movement in more than 1,000 coaches and minivans. Supporters at the rally itself filled one hall at the vast Villepinte exhibition centre near Paris.

Expatriate groups have held a series of smaller rallies this week and in Brussels on Saturday about 300 protestors gathered in a peaceful demonstration outside the Iranian embassy.

Saturday's rally came as riot police in Iran used teargas and water cannon to disperse demonstrators protesting the election result which saw sitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad returned to office amid widespread claims of voting fraud.

The NCRI has thousands of followers in Europe and the United States and was the first group to expose Iran's covert nuclear program in 2002.

It claims to have huge backing within Iran although western analysts say its support is hard to gauge and is limited because of its collaboration with Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

The main faction within the NCRI opposition umbrella movement is the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI), based in Iraq, which European states agreed this year to remove it from a list of banned terrorist groups.

The group, also known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, is trying to persuade the U.S. to stop classifying it as a terrorist group, as well.

In the northern Germany city of Hamburg, some 4,000 people marched through the city Saturday to protest Iran's election result. Police said most were of Iranian origin and the event passed peacefully.

	United States President Barack Obama.
	Photo by: (Reuters)