IRANIAN PRESIDENT SACKED HIS FOREIGN MINISTER

THERAN, Iran - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has sacked Manouchehr Mottaki, his foreign minister, the official IRNA news agency has reported.
The announcement came on Monday, but no reasons were given for Mottaki's dismissal, which comes as Iran is engaged in talks with world powers over its sensitive nuclear programme.

• Ahmadinejad appointed the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, a close ally to the president, as caretaker for the ministry, state television reported.
• The sudden shake-up could reflect growing rifts between the ruling clerics and Ahmadinejad's hard-line government, which is strongly backed by the powerful Revolutionary Guard.
• "This moves shows not only the internal tensions but the primacy of the nuclear issue as Iran's main foreign policy objective,'' said Rasool Nafisi, an expert on Iranian affairs at Strayer University in Virginia.
• Mottaki, a career diplomat, was appointed to the post of foreign minister in August 2005. He is currently in Senegal on an official visit, and it is unclear whether he was aware of the president's decision in advance.
• A fluent speaker of English who is also comfortable in Urdu and Turkish, Mottaki earned a degree in social sciences from the University of Bangalore in India and a graduate degree in international relations from Tehran University in 1991.

A reformist website said Mottaki had been critical of Ahmadinejad's policies. "Mottaki failed to adjust himself to the president's viewpoints and his foreign policy," the Mardomsalari website reported.
Sadegh Zibakalam, a professor in political science at the Tehran university, told Al Jazeera that there had been rumours of tensions between Ahmadinejad and Mottaki.

Source: The Agency