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Hassan Rouhani leads Iranian presidential elections with over 50 percent of votes (UPDATE 8)

Iran Materials 15 June 2013 15:03 (UTC +04:00)
Initial results from Iran’s presidential vote show reformist candidate Hassan Rohani in the lead.
Hassan Rouhani leads Iranian presidential elections with over 50 percent of votes (UPDATE 8)

Details added (first version was published on 07:09)

Azerbaijan, Baku, Jun.15/ Trend R.Zamanov

Iran's Interior Ministry has updated the voting count for the presidential elections in the country.

The latest statistics say so far votes from 21,376 polling stations were counted (out of 58,764 stations).

In total 16,716,937 votes have been counted, of them 16,166,392 are considered to be valid. The invalid votes are those that were wrongly submitted, or violated, and will not be counted.

Hassan Rouhani continues to lead the race with 8,439,530 votes. If a candidate wins over 50 percent of the vote in the first round, he will replace incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Otherwise, a run-off will be held in a week's time to determine a final winner in the race.

Rouhani is followed by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (2,560,383), Mohsen Rezaee (2,101,330), Saeed Jalili (1,890,462), Ali Akbar Velayati (977,765), and Mohammad Gharazi (196,922).

The 11th presidential elections have been officially held yesterday in Iran and 96 foreign countries. Over 50 million Iranians were eligible to take part in Friday's polls.

Due to high amount of people willing to leave their votes for the candidates, the time of the elections was extended several times, before the final closure of the polls.

The president of Iran is elected for a four-year term in a national election. The Guardian Council has vetted the candidates for qualifications.

Hassan Rouhani is an Iranian politician. He has been a member of the Assembly of Experts since 1999, member of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Expediency Council since 1991, member of the Supreme National Security Council since 1989, and head of the Center for Strategic Research since 1992.

Rouhani has been also deputy speaker of the 4th and 5th terms of the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majlis) and secretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 1989 to 2005. He was also heading Iran's former nuclear negotiating team and was the country's top negotiator with the EU-3 (UK, France, and Germany) on the Iran's nuclear program.

On 11 April, 2013, Rouhani announced he would run for president in the elections that will be held in June 2013. He said that he will prepare a "civil rights charter", restore the economy and improve rocky relations with the West if he is elected.

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