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SV INTERIOR Nabavi speaking at news conference with reporters listening (3 shots)
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Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: INTRODUCTION: Iranian government spokesman Behzad Nabavi has denied allegations that two of Iran's prominent religious leaders were involved in illicit money transactions. They were accused of secretly sending money out of the country by the former President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, still in hiding a month after his fall from power. Transcripts of the speech circulating in Teheran suggested that mr. Bani-Sadr was still in the country.

SYNOPSIS:
Mr. Nabavi, who is Iran's Minister of State, used this recent news conference for local and foreign reporters to attack the former president. Mr. Bani-Sadr had named the former head of the Islamic Republican Party, Ayatollah Beheshti and one of Iran's three most influential mullahs, Hojatoleslam Khamanei, Mr. Nabavi strongly denied that the two leaders had been involved in the sending money out of the country illegally. He said there were no transactions or documents which could in any way implicate Ayatollah Beheshti -- killed in a bomb blast last month -- and his colleague.

Mr. Nabavi also said Iran had been doing well in the war against Iraq. He explained that Iranian forces had secured a number of victories, despite the superiority of Iraq's military equipment and the activities of counter-revolutionaries inside Iran.