ANKARA, Turkey -- Iran's parliament today rejected U.S.-educated Ali Akbar Velayati's appointment as prime minister to replace Mohammed Reza Mahdavi-Kani, a Majlis spokesman said.
The parliament turned down the 36-year-old pediatrician by a vote of 80-74 with 38 abstentions, the spokesman said.
There was no immediate word on reasons for the unexpected vote, which could prove a setback for new President Hojjatoleslam Sayed Ali Khamenei.
Velayati's nomination Monday had surprised observers who were expecting Mahdavi-Kani to continue in his post.
Khamenei had pledged to keep Mahdavi-Kani when he was elected president Oct. 2, then changed him without offering an explanation.
Velayati, a non-cleric, was nominated despite two apparent 'blemishes' on his revolutionary record -- his American degree and an award for work in pediatric medicine, which he received during the shah's rule.
The Majlis action came following the release of an interview in which ousted president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr said the taking of American hostages had tarnished the Iranian revolution.
Despite his once close friendship with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Bani-Sadr said the ayatollah 'would make me disappear' if he blocked the Islamic leader's path to power.
Interviewed at his heavily guarded exile home outside Paris on NBC-TV's 'Tomorrow Coast to Coast' program, Bani-Sadr said it was dishonorable to have taken the Americans hostage because it was not a courageous act.
'I mean, no one says to us, well, you were a courageous people, you invaded an embassy,' he said. 'That's not courageous. That's the first point.
'The second point is the effect that the hostage affair had on our revolution,on our country and on our place in the world. The message of our revolution was soiled, tarnished by this whole affair,' Bani-Sadr said.
'Our people were making the revolution in the name of human rights, of freedom and, therefore, this action really went against it.'
As a result, he said, American 'propaganda' on the hostage issue destroyed the revolution and isolated Iran.
Bani-Sadr, who returned to Iran with Khomeini in 1979 after the shah's downfall and later became president, refused to say whether he would help assassinate the ayatollah, but said he would 'absolutely' end his regime.
'He wants power, that's what he wants,' Bani-Sadr said. 'He doesn't necessarily want me to die but if I block the road to power, then he would certainly ... make me disappear ... just the way he made 1,700 people disappear through executions. So you see, his basic ideology is the ideology of power.'
Bani-Sadr, who fell out with Khomeini and finally fled to France in July, said he had known even before the ayatollah returned to Iran from exile in Paris he would not be the proper leader for Iran.
He said Khomeini did not understand why the revolution took place, 'and so my feeling is one of bitterness because we did make this revolution so that the people could regain their rights and discharge their duties and have legal status, a status defined under law and defended by the principles of law. And we still don't have that.'
