Ayatollah Ali Khamenei formally approves a second presidential term for Ahmadinejad, who is scheduled to be sworn in by parliament on Wednesday. Some officials boycott the Khamenei ceremony, which is not shown on state television.

    Beirut - Iran's supreme leader today endorsed the controversial Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second presidential term seven weeks after a disputed reelection that continues to roil the nation, state television reported.

    In an unusually discreet ceremony boycotted by some Iranian officials and not broadcast live on state television, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei formally OKd the second term of Ahmadinejad, who has emerged as the most divisive leader in the Islamic Republic's 30-year history.

    Television images of the ceremony broadcast on Iran's state-owned Arabic-language Al-Alam channel showed a seated Khamenei, flanked by Ahmadinejad and the chiefs of parliament, judiciary branch and the Guardian Council, who sat in the spot usually reserved for Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a supporter of the opposition.

    "The nation voted for the dignified and blessed discourse of the Islamic Revolution, courageous resistance against international colonialists and for a fight against arrogance," Khamenei said in his letter approving the president, according to state broadcasting. "The nation voted for a fight against poverty, corruption, discrimination and aristocracy, modest life, proximity to people, sympathizing with the poor and indefatigable work."

    Photographs showed several hundred people at the venue, including foreign diplomats.

    Rafsanjani, along with former President Mohammad Khatami and opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, were among the political and religious leaders who boycotted the ceremony in protest of Ahmadinejad, who is mocked as leader of the "coup d'etat" government in the reformist press.

    Iran's reformists are enraged by the weekend broadcasting of confessions by prominent moderate politicians held for weeks in solitary confinement without access to lawyers or their families in what they have denounced as "show trials." Ahmadinejad must also be sworn in before parliament Wednesday before he begins his second term by introducing his new Cabinet.

    Iran's political system combines elements of a democratic republic with religious rule. Regular elections are held for the president and parliament but Khamenei has the final decision on all matters of state. In recent years, Ahmadinejad and allied hard-liners in the Revolutionary Guard and security forces have begun to nudge out the clergy who dominated political life in the first two decades following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

    By some accounts, Ahmadinejad got a frosty start to his new term. State-controlled television did not broadcast the ceremony live, as it did at the start of his first term in 2005. Many analysts suspect that authorities feared broadcasting the ceremony would highlight the number of no-shows.

    Television images shown on the nation's Arabic-language channel, without sound, showed Khamenei rebuffing Ahmadinejad's attempt to kiss him on the hand, as he did during the 2005 ceremony, but instead awkwardly allowing him to kiss his shoulder.

    Khamenei's speech was hardly a ringing endorsement. "Political groups are divided into three groups; one group is opposed to the government, another group is in favor of the government and the third one comprises critics of the government," Khamenei said, according to an account on Tabnak.ir, a conservative website close to former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezai, who was shown at the ceremony.

    "The government should welcome the critics and take them into account," the news website quoted him as saying. Ahmadinejad recently likened his relationship to Khamenei as that of a son to a father.