Iran's president nominated a fourth candidate to be oil minister on Sunday in an effort to end the crisis with parliament, which has rejected his previous nominees for the job.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nominated the acting oil minister, Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh, in a letter to parliament that was read during a live session on state-run radio. Vaziri-Hamaneh was a deputy oil minister in the previous government and is considered an industry veteran.
The parliament had dismissed Ahmadinejad's earlier candidates on the grounds that they did not have enough experience in the oil business. Iran is OPEC's second largest oil producer, and 80 percent of its revenue comes from the exporting of oil. Ahmadinejad made the country's oil revenue central to his election campaign in June and promised to distribute parts of the oil income among the poor.
Members of parliament told ISNA student news agency that they would not decide about Vaziri-Hamaneh until they discussed his agenda with him this week.
In a meeting with reporters on Sunday, Vaziri-Hamaneh criticized the way foreign investment took place in Iran's oil industry and said he would change it if parliament approved him for the position.
He said Iran wanted to continue having foreign partners but wanted to stop the practice of buy-backs, which involve development of an oil field by a foreign company in return for a share of the output for a specific period of time.
Iran's oil fields are in desperate need of development and foreign investment to increase the country's production capacity. It is now producing 4.2 million barrels per day but it has set an ambitious goal of raising its production to 5.4 million barrels per day by 2010.
Members of parliament said Sunday that they would not be forced into accepting the candidate for the Oil Ministry simply because the agency has been left without a minister for more than three months.
"It seems that the president's refusal to collaborate and consult with parliament has become a political move," said Reza Talai-Neek, a conservative member, the ISNA reported.
Nezam Molla-Hoveizeh, another conservative member, told the news agency that Vaziri-Hamaneh's lack of knowledge of any foreign language was considered a major disadvantage.
Ahmadinejad has moved ahead with his new policies despite criticism. Students at Tehran University held a protest last week after the dean of the university was replaced by a cleric by Ahmadinejad's new minister of higher education.
The students said the appointment of the new dean, Abbassali Amid Zanjani, a high-ranking cleric, was an insult to the academy because he did not hold a university degree and because his appointment was against the usual process of selection of the dean by a board of professors.
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