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Former parliament speaker Medhi Karroubi said on Tuesday that the government emerging from the disputed June 12 election was not "legitimate" after Ahmadinejad's victory was certified by the nation's top electoral body.

"Last night, after Karroubi's statement was released, representatives of the Tehran prosecutor and the culture ministry prevented the publication of Etemad Melli newspaper," his Etemad Melli party said on its website."They wanted the statement censored and not published -- so the newspaper will not be published today," it said.

Ahmadinejad's challengers are backed by a coalition of prominent Muslim clerics and veteran Iranian politicians who oppose Ahmadinejad's policies both at home and abroad, turning this election into an unusually stark confrontation between two political factions with opposing views of the future of Iran.

Ahmadinejad's main challengers advocate better relations with the United States. They promise to ensure that Iran's nuclear program will have strictly peaceful purposes, and they say the Holocaust should not be an issue in Iranian politics. "Ahmadinejad's comments on the Holocaust were a great service to Israel," Mehdi Karroubi, a cleric and the most outspoken opposition candidate, told a group of students in April. "What has happened that we now have to support Hitler?" he asked. "This is none of our business."

Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who is backed mainly by Tehran's educated urban elite, has stressed that he would calm international opposition to Iran's nuclear program by providing guarantees -- which he has not specified -- that Iran will not turn its research on atomic energy into an effort to build nuclear weapons.

One of the three defeated candidates, Mohsen Rezai, a conservative, has now withdrawn his complaint about the poll. Barack Obama has condemned the "unjust" violence used against protesters.

The US president's comments came as the UK expelled two Iranian diplomats in response to the expulsion of two of its own officials from Tehran.

The Iranian authorities have accused Britain and the US of trying to destabilise the country, something they have denied.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been re-elected as president of Iran in a resounding victory, the interior minister says.With more than 80% of results in, official figures said he won 62.6% of the vote, amid a record high turnout.

But reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi has also claimed victory, calling the result a "dangerous charade", as backers vowed to appeal for a re-run. Police have sealed off Mr Mousavi's campaign HQ, preventing his supporters from holding a news conference.

There have been reports of police deploying on the streets of Tehran and beating people with truncheons as small groups gather to protest.

A hard-line politician and former head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezai, announced Wednesday that he would enter the presidential race, indicating additional splintering among the country’s conservatives.

Mr. Rezai, who oversaw the Revolutionary Guards from 1981 to 1997, had been seeking to unite conservative politicians behind another candidate to compete against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But he decided instead to become a candidate himself in the presidential election, to be held June 12, Iranian news media reported.

Mr. Rezai, who has accused Mr. Ahmadinejad of mismanaging the economy, will run as an independent candidate, the ISNA news agency reported.

"We told the International Atomic Energy Agency, 'Remove those seals or we will do it and mail them to you,' " he said, as the crowd exploded into shouts of "Vote Ahmadinejad!"

Ahmadinejad has appealed to the country's downtrodden, particularly the rural poor, promising to raise their salaries and pensions. He has even handed out potatoes.

Ahmadinejad's opponents contend that his populist efforts to redistribute wealth among Iran's 67 million people have caused high inflation, slower economic growth and a steep rise in unemployment.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, has won a second term in office after a bitterly fought election, Iran's interior ministry has said.Ahmadinejad took 62.63 per cent of the vote, crushing Mir Hossein Mousavi, his main rival, who got just 33.75 per cent, according to results released on Saturday.

The Guardian Council, a powerful body of clerics which oversees Iran's constitution, is still to release its count, but there seemed little doubt about the result after Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the supreme leader, congratulated Ahmadinejad.

Mousavi, who had himself declared victory just moments after the polls closed on Friday, described the decision to declare Ahmadinejad as the winner as "treason to the votes of the people".  "I personally strongly protest the many obvious violations and I'm warning I will not surrender to this dangerous charade," he said in a statement. "The result of such performance by some officials will jeopardise the pillars of the Islamic Republic and will establish tyranny."

A newspaper editor seen as close to Iran's top authority said on Saturday defeated election candidate Mirhossein Mousavi and a former pro-reform president had committed "terrible crimes" which should be tried in court. In a commentary published in his hardline Kayhan daily, editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari suggested Mousavi and his supporters in last month's disputed election had acted on the instructions of the United States.

"An open court, in front of the people's eyes, must deal with all the terrible crimes and clear betrayal committed by the main elements behind the recent unrest, including Mousavi and Khatami," he wrote, referring to former President Mohammad Khatami, a leading reformist who backed Mousavi in the election. Another hardline newspaper, Javan, said 100 members of parliament had signed a letter to the judiciary calling for the leaders of "post-election riots" to face trial, pointing to Mousavi and fellow defeated moderate Mehdi Karoubi.

"All they did and said was in line with the instructions announced by American officials in the past," Shariatmadari, who is close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote.

Iran's supreme leader gave his blessing to the outcome of the country's presidential election Sunday despite widespread allegations of fraud, calling the results "a divine miracle," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

In a letter published on Moussavi's Web site, the candidate said he has asked the election authority -- Iran's Guardian Council -- to nullify Friday's results. There were conflicting reports on whether Moussavi had been placed under house arrest, but in a statement Iranian police said that the candidate was not under arrest.

Another opposition candidate said he has asked Iran's Guardian Council -- a body of top clerics and judges that supervises elections -- to investigate. Former parliament speaker Mehdi Karrubi, who finished in third place with a single-digit percentage of the vote in the official results, asked supporters "to find solutions through legal and civic institutions," according to his political movement's newspaper.

Iran's top legislative body says it is investigating 646 complaints from the three defeated presidential candidates over last week's election.The powerful Guardian Council said it had invited Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai to a meeting on Saturday to discuss the complaints. Another key body has raised eyebrows by failing to endorse the election result.

Guardian Council spokesman Abbasali Khadkhodai said a "careful examination" of the 646 complaints from the three candidates had begun. "We decided to personally invite the esteemed candidates and those who have complaints regarding the election to take part in an extraordinary session of the Guardian Council on Saturday," he said.

The Guardian Council - made up of six clerics and six lawyers - is traditionally loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Many of Mousavi's and Karroubi's allies were important figures in the Islamic revolution that swept Iran in 1979 but have been sidelined under Ahmadinejad.

In Semnan, as Ahmadinejad handed out gold coins to the families of soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq war, his supporters said cheating would be unnecessary.

Ahmadinejad told local reporters in Tehran he would answer criticisms of his four years as president during the televised debates. He suggested criticism of him was a breach of "election law", according to the Islamic Republic News Agency ."Under the election law, nobody has the right to do candidates any harm. Distortion of one's image is an offence. As for the second mistake, it should be said that those people will fail to prove many of the allegations they raise against [my] government."

With just over 46 million Iranians eligible to vote, who wins is likely to come down to voter turnout after less than three weeks of official campaigning. If less than 27 million votes are cast, analysts believe, it would favour Ahmadinejad, who can count on 13 million votes from those who favour hardliners. A bigger turnout - in excess of 30 million - would move the polls towards the reformists Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

His campaign manager, Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi, said a high turnout can definitely unseat Ahmadinejad. "If more than 32 million votes are cast, the possibility that Ahmadinejad will not win is over 65%," he said. "But if 27 million people or less vote, the likelihood of a change is less than 35%."

the accusations and the insults that Ahmadinejad directed at some of the most senior politicians such as Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammed Khatami and even Natiq Nouri – who is one of the most senior advisers to the Supreme Leader whose children Ahmadinejad accused of accumulating wealth illicitly – not only deepens divisions between different branches of the government but also brought these divisions into public view for the first time and in an unprecedented manner.

In the letter, Rafsanjani requested that Khamanei break his silence but what happened on Saturday morning, a few hours after the elections, and even before the final results were announced, was that Khamanei rushed to congratulate Ahmadinejad and endorsed the results. That was not normal at all because usually after elections the Council of Guardians and the Ministry of Interior await complaints that may be raised by parties taking part in the elections, expecting there to have been irregularities. Presidential candidates have the right to raise complaints before the results are verified but the Supreme Leader did not wait for this process to take place and he quickly congratulated Ahmadinejad who in turn called on his supporters to celebrate in Vali Asr in Tehran and Iranian state television began to broadcast messages of congratulations from various leaders and presidents to Ahmadinejad on his reelection.

if the results weren’t final and the candidates could raise their complaints how could the Supreme Leader declare his support for the results? The Supreme Leader’s behavior caused a lot of serious questions to be raised by the grand Ayatollahs in Iran and members of the Assembly of Experts headed by Rafsanjani, which has the right to dismiss the Supreme Leader according to the Constitution. It raised many questions about the Supreme Leader’s validity.

A key rally against Iran's presidential elections will go ahead on Saturday - in defiance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei - opposition sources say.

The wife of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, and an aide to another rival candidate Mehdi Karroubi, said the rally would go ahead.

Abbas Mohtaj - head of Iran's State Security Council and also deputy interior minister - issued a direct warning to Mr Mousavi. "Should you provoke and call for these illegal rallies you will be responsible for the consequences," he said in a statement.