Saturday, June 20, 2009 TEHRAN: Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday demanded an end to street protests over last week's disputed presidential election, siding with declared winner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Making his first public appearance after daily demonstrations against the results, he ruled out any major fraud in the election and warned that defeated candidates would be held to account over any renewed violence on the streets. "The people have chosen whom they wanted," Khamenei said in a sermon at the main weekly prayers in Tehran.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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