The New York Times-20080127-Tehran-s Mayor Speaks of Making Iran Less Isolated

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Tehran's Mayor Speaks of Making Iran Less Isolated

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The annual economic gathering here not only attracts those with power in business and politics but also offers a springboard for those who wish to wield it.

Among the contenders in attendance this year is Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, the 46-year-old mayor of Tehran who is being urged by some to run for the presidency of Iran next year as an authoritarian modernizer.

Mr. Ghalibaf, who ran for president in 2005 and comes from the hard-line Islamic Revolution tradition, was once a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards. But he is also part of an emerging group of politicians who consider President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be harming the country's economy through his acerbic anti-Western speeches and isolationist policies.

So, will he run again? The mayor was asked in an interview Friday at his hotel below the ski slopes along this Swiss village.

The most important thing is the will of the people, he said, declining to be more specific. It is a long time remaining to the elections. Only time will tell.

But if he were to run, he went on, he would campaign for greater openness toward the outside world to attract more foreign investment and so reduce unemployment.

The idea of a Tehran mayor becoming president is not improbable.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was also the capital's mayor, and Mr. Ghalibaf suggested that his achievements since his election as mayor in 2005 -- improving public transportation projects and creating local councils -- would help place him in good standing.

In the two and a half years that he has been in office, Mr. Ghalibaf has built bridges and highways, fixed sidewalks and paved streets and has earned a reputation as someone who gets things done. As police chief, he enforced seat belt use and orderly driving regulations in a city not known for either practice.

According to his official biography, Mr. Ghalibaf fought in the Iran-Iraq war for eight years and became a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards. The biography also describes him as an airplane pilot, a former presidential contender and an academic. He denied in the interview that he was a military man.

When Mr. Ghalibaf was Tehran's police chief, reform-minded Iranians saw him as a hard-liner because he and other commanders of the Revolutionary Guards signed a letter threatening to intervene unless the authorities quelled a pro-democracy uprising.

But, his aides said, he was the first police chief since the Islamic Revolution to hire female officers.

Mr. Ghalibaf did not take issue with the description of authoritarian modernizer. Before making an administrative decision, he said, he consults widely but, once the decision is made, we go forward strongly.

As for Iranian politics, Mr. Ghalibaf did not seem prepared to criticize the government openly. The government of President Ahmadinejad is elected by the Iranian people, and we respect it, he said. But we are different on some issues, including the management of power and economic relations.

We would be more open, an aide said.

That offer of openness, however, did not extend to the United States, where Mr. Ghalibaf seemed to adhere to the Iranian orthodoxy requiring Washington to change its attitude before deep animosities could be eased.

If the United States can change its unilateral approach and replace it with a bilateral approach, then we can have dialogue, he said. An aide explained that he meant Iran wanted the United States to treat it as a partner, not as a renegade.

The deepest gulf between the two concerns Iran's nuclear ambitions, and Mr. Ghalibaf seemed as insistent as any other Iranian official in saying that his country neither sought nuclear weapons, as Western nations say it does, nor threatened its neighbors.

If Iran needs to defend itself, it can use conventional weapons to resist any attack, he said, speaking through an interpreter. We don't need any atomic weapons or unconventional weapons. In our Islamic belief, these kind of things are forbidden.

Mr. Ghalibaf said he had come to Davos to convince foreigners that in Tehran they can find stable economic opportunities, and in Tehran we have got security.

[Illustration]PHOTO: Mayor Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf of Tehran ran for president in 2005 and has expressed concerns about Iran's economy. (PHOTOGRAPH BY HASAN SARBAKHSHIAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS)