WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States refrained from recognizing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sunday as the winner in Iran's presidential elections, with US Vice President Joe Biden voicing doubts about the outcome.
"There is an awful lot of questions about how this election was run," Biden said in an interview with NBC television.
"We are waiting to see. We don't have enough facts to make a firm judgment," he said.
His comments came a day after thousands of people took to the streets of Tehran to protest alleged fraud and vote rigging in Friday's elections which saw Ahmadinejad crush his main rival, moderate former premier Mir Hussein Mousavi.
Clashes flared again on Sunday with police firing tear gas and shots in the air to stone-throwing protesters shouting "Death to the dictator."
Police said they have detained 170 people, including 15 reformist leaders and supporters of candidates challenging Ahmadinejad for the presidency.
But Ahmadinejad dismissed criticism of the election, saying at a press conference the massive turnout was a blow to the "oppressive system ruling the world," a reference to Iran's arch-foe the United States.
He said his margin of victory over Mousavi was so wide it could not be questioned and said the election was like a "football match" and the loser should just "let it go."
But Biden expressed doubts about the official results, which gave Ahmadinejad 63 percent of the vote to 34 percent to Mousavi.
"It sure looks like the way they are suppressing speech, the way they're suppressing crowds, the way in which people are being treated, that there are some real doubts about that," Biden said.
"Seventy percent of the vote comes out of the city, that's not Ahmadinejad's strong place," Biden said. "The idea he gets 68 or whatever percent of the vote in a circumstance like that seems unlikely."
"We have to see what the results were, we have to have an analysis of it, and that will be done by not just us, by every country in the world and we can make a better judgment then," he said.
But Biden suggested that a contested result would not keep Washington from pursuing talks with Tehran, no matter who emerges victorious in the presidential elections.
"Talks with Iran are not a reward for good behavior. They are only a consequence if the president makes a judgment it's in the best interest of the United States of America to talk with the Iranian regime.
"Our interests are the same before the election as after the election, and that is we want them to cease from seeking a nuclear weapon and having one in his possession and secondly to stop supporting terror," he said.
"We are ready to talk," Biden said.
Pressed on Iran's nuclear ambitions, however, Biden said, "We are not going to allow Iran to go nuclear any more than the rest of the world is going to allow Iran to go nuclear."
US lawmakers, however, said a contested outcome would complicate US efforts to engage Iran.
"If he won in a legitimate election, that's one thing," Senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat, said of Ahmadinejad. "If it was filled with fraud, as is now alleged, that's quite another thing."
"And we see the Iranian people in the streets by the thousands, saying that they believe that their votes were stolen. So, this becomes a very serious matter for the Iranian people, and certainly for our relations with them," he said, speaking on CNN.
Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, said she was skeptical that any dialogue with hardliners in Tehran would be successful.
"And these voting irregularities, the arrests of opposition clerics and opposition leaders, certainly makes it far more challenging for the president," she said.
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