Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
by Farshid Motahari, dpa, Berlin
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will not attend the next OPEC meeting scheduled for June 8 in Vienna, an Iranian oil ministry official said Monday.
Shojaeddin Bazargani told the official news agency IRNA that in a recent meeting, the president said that a minister would be assigned to represent the country both in the Vienna meeting and OPEC's joint session with the European Union.
Ahmadinejad last week dismissed oil minister Massoud Mirkazemi and took over the ministry himself, which would have also made him rotating chairman at the OPEC meeting in Vienna.
But Iran's constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council, rejected the plan as illegal and said that Ahmadinejad could not run the oil ministry as caretaker.
The president's legal deputy, Fatemeh Bodaghi, said however that Ahmadinejad would remain caretaker of the ministry since the Guardian Council can only intervene on future decisions but not on those already made.
Ahmadinejad had argued that he planned to trim the cabinet, and one of his decisions was to abolish the oil ministry and merge it with the energy ministry. The plan led to wide-spread criticism in Parliament.
Ahmadinejad is involved in a row with Iran's clergy and conservative factions over his reform plans, which include reducing the cabinet from 21 to 17 ministries.
As caretaker of the oil ministry, Ahmadinejad would have been obliged to chair as well the OPEC meeting next month in Vienna, where protests against the Iranian president are reportedly being planned.
Copyright (c) 2011, dpa, Berlin
Oil & Gas Post
Promote Your Page Too
No comments:
Post a Comment