Iran`s presidential-elect Rouhani vows to fight `extremism`

Sydney: Iran` new presidential-elect Hassan Rouhani has hailed his election win as a victory over extremism.

Major powers quickly offered to engage with the moderate cleric and former nuclear negotiator, who has promised a more constructive approach to talks. According to news.com.au, Iran`s reformist press hailed Rouhani as the `sheikh of hope`. The press added that Rouhani`s victory promised a return to optimism after the eight-year grip of conservatives under outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad . Rouhani was declared outright winner with 50.68 percent of votes cast in Friday`s election. In his first statement, Rouhani called on world powers to treat Iran with respect and recognise its rights, an apparent allusion to its controversial nuclear program. He added that his victory was a victory of intelligence, of moderation, of progress over extremism. According to the report, he has also offered to restore diplomatic ties with the United States, which cut relations in the aftermath of the 1979 seizure of the American embassy by Islamist students. An enormous crowd chanted and cheered and flooded Haft-e-Tir Square in the centre of Tehran and Kharim Khan street, where Rouhani`s headquarters were located. In a televised debate on social and cultural policy a week before the vote, he called for equal rights for women, freedom of the press, an abandonment of the ban on satellite television receivers, and for the government to remove itself from the arts in general, the report added. ANI