Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini today asked Iran's parliament to do more for the nation's poor after legislative elections that boosted radicals seeking economic reform. Iran's leader also renewed his declarations that the 7{-year-old Persian Gulf war with Iraq would be settled on the battlefield, not at the negotiating table. He made his remarks in an inaugural message read to the 270-member Majlis, or parliament, by his son and aide, Ahmed. Earlier, President Ali Khamenei acknowledged that Iraq won victories recently in the ground war but said they would not affect final outcome of the conflict. The 87-year-old Khomeini, who was reported to be ill, asked the Majlis to ``simplify'' Iran's complicated government system. ``I hope that by close cooperation between the Majlis, the Council of Guardians and other experts, the problems of the deprived can be solved,'' he said in the message read by his son and carried by Tehran radio. Laws are submitted to the Council of Guardians after they pass through parliament. In Iran, ``deprived'' is a codeword for urban and rural poor. They were a major force in the revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979. Khomeini has increasingly come down on the side of the radicals. They favor price controls, a minimum wage, land redistribution and other measures to help deal with runaway inflation and economic inequities. They are opposed by conservative believers in private property, many of whom are clerics or merchants and whose views are heavily represented in the Council of Guardians. The parliament was elected in two rounds of balloting in April and earlier this month. The exact breakdown of power blocs was not yet known, but based on announced results the radicals clearly gained influence. The new, four-year parliament is the third since the revolution. Referring to Iran's armed forces, Khomeini said in his message: ``The combatants must continue their fight by depending on their faith in God and their weapons,'' he said. ``The fate of the war will be decided on the war fronts, not through negotiations.'' The official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that the president, Khamenei, also addressed the inaugural session and told the deputies they must work for social justice. Tehran radio earlier said Khamenei told worshipers in a prayer sermon Friday on the campus of Tehran University that ``war has a two-sided aspect.'' ``You will not find, in any of the wars in the world which last a long time, one side always winning and the other always losing. If one side constantly wins and the other constantly loses, the war will not last. It will be over,'' he was quoted as saying. The remarks followed two major battlefield defeats for Iran: the recapture by Iraq of the southern Faw peninsula April 18, and of a chunk of Iraqi territory east of the port city of Basra on Wednesday. Khamenei said, Iraq ``has had one or two victories and successes. These successes of the enemy are not beyond our expectation.'' The language used by the Iranian president to concede the defeats was unusually blunt, reflecting the scale of the reverses suffered by Iran since mid-May. In addition to the defeats in the ground war, U.S. forces on April 18 destroyed Iranian offshore platforms, sank a patrol boat and crippled two frigates in a series of clashes in the Persian Gulf. Iran's state-run media already had conceded that Iranian forces withdrew from some of their positions east of Basra. And after the Faw battle, it indirectly admitted setbacks by accusing United States forces of intervening on Iraq's side. But Khamenei assured his audience that Iran would prevail. ``We have no doubt that the nation which will have the last word and which will inflict the last blow is this same heroic and martyr-nurturing nation which, in the course of these years, has not for a moment felt a sense of weakness in confronting the big powers,'' he said. ``The great movement by the people towards final objectives and final victory has been charted by the imam (Khomeini) and the people are willingly and diligently following this path.'' Western military and political analysts have said it is too early to tell whether the string of defeats will represent a turning point in the war. But they say the setbacks have badly jolted the Tehran leadership at a time of growing economic woes and a power struggle between radicals who want a state-run economy and conservatives who back private property rights.
