Ahmadinejad rebukes Obama

The Iranian Foreign Ministry also reacted sharply Saturday to criticism from the Group of Eight world powers, whose foreign ministers met this week in Trieste, Italy. The representatives of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia said Friday that "we deplore post-election violence which led to the loss of lives of Iranian civilians and urge Iran to respect fundamental human rights." However, their statement stopped short of questioning the results of Iran's election.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman denounced the G-8 statement as "interfering and hasty."

According to state-run media, at least 17 people have been killed and 100 injured in post-election violence in Iran. Press TV, an English-language version of state television, has quoted unidentified sources as saying 20 have been killed, including eight members of the pro-government Basij militia. There has been no independent confirmation of the reports.

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch charged Saturday that Basij militiamen "are carrying out brutal nighttime raids, destroying property in private homes and beating civilians in an attempt to stop nightly protest chants." The group referred to a form of protest in which people shout slogans such as "Allahu akbar" ("God is great") from rooftops at night, emulating a technique used to rally opposition to the shah of Iran three decades ago ahead of the country's 1979 Islamic revolution.

"Witnesses are telling us that the Basijis are trashing entire streets and even neighborhoods as well as individual homes trying to stop the nightly rooftop protest chants," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

In the latest attempt to resolve the electoral dispute, the Guardian Council, a supervisory body that oversees elections, created a "special committee" to review the results and invited participation by Mousavi and another opposition candidate, Mehdi Karroubi. The council said 10 percent of the ballot boxes would be recounted in the presence of the committee and gave the two candidates 24 hours to name their representatives.

Mousavi and Karroubi both rejected the offer Saturday, saying the committee would not be independent and that the scope of the review would not be broad enough.

"Reaching a just judgment is not within the domain of the Guardian Council and, above all, a board which is appointed by this council," Mousavi said on his campaign Web site, according to a translation by Agence France-Presse. "I insist again on canceling the election as the most suitable way out of the problem."

He said that limiting the recount to 10 percent of the ballot boxes "cannot attract people's trust and convince public opinion about the results."

Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a top Mousavi campaign official, confirmed in a telephone interview that Mousavi would not send a representative to the committee.