News In Brief

Iranian leaders plan to end their international isolation

Iranian government leaders have put into effect a plan to end their international isolation and ensure control by moderates when the 84-year-old Ayatollah Khomeini dies, the Washington Post reported Saturday. Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, a former Iranian president who fled the country in 1981, said in a dispatch from Paris that the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and the current president, Ali Khamenei, have agreed to set aside their differences and cooperate after Khomeini's death. The plan also includes negotiating a settlement to the four-year-old war with Iraq, diplomatic openings to Western countries, and repression of internal enemies of the government.