Iran Considers Moving Capital

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By Parisa Hafezi
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Alarmed by the high death toll and level of destruction caused by the recent Bam earthquake, top policymakers are considering moving Iran's capital away from quake-prone Tehran, officials and newspapers said on Monday.

"The Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) will shortly discuss a plan to move the capital from Tehran," SNSC chief Hassan Rohani was quoted as saying by the Hayat-e No newspaper.

Rohani said a plan to move the capital, which lies on a major seismological fault, was proposed by the SNSC in 1991, "but due to resistance from certain entities in the establishment, the plan was halted."

Rohani said the SNSC would update its 1991 proposal on moving the capital and submit it for consideration by the end of the current Iranian calendar year in March 2004. He did not say to where the capital could be moved.

Government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh said moving the capital had been under discussion since 1989 due to Tehran's heavy overcrowding, chaotic traffic, chronic pollution and earthquake risk.

"There have been contradictory views and still our experts have not been able reach a conclusion," Ramazanzadeh told a news conference on Monday.

Even before the December 26 earthquake in Bam, which measured 6.8 on the Richter scale and killed more than 30,000, seismologists had warned a strong earthquake in Tehran would be catastrophic for the city of 12 million people.