The World - News from Sept. 13, 1988

Iran’s Parliament approved 18 ministers in a vote of confidence for Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi’s government but rejected three, including Revolutionary Guards Minister Mohsen Rafighdost, Tehran Radio said. The veto on Rafighdost apparently reflected anger over disastrous battlefield defeats suffered by Iran before it abruptly accepted a U.N.-sponsored cease-fire July 18. These setbacks had been blamed on the Revolutionary Guards. The parliamentary debate opened Sunday amid a deepening rift between hard-liners demanding economic isolation and tight state control of the economy and their rivals, including House Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani, who seek to open oil-rich Iran to the outside world in the postwar era.