220,000 specialists and businessmen left Iran in year: minister

Friday, May 04, 2001

AFP TEHRAN, May 2 (AFP) - Some 220,000 leading scientific specialists and businessmen left Iran in the past year, Science Minister Mostafa Moin was quoted as saying Tuesday by the student news agency ISNA. He added that it "unlikely that they will return." He criticised the "lack of support and clear policies" for developing research and technology, saying that his ministry's budget in hard currency was just 40 million dollars. "If academics had a proper place in our society, we would not have been inflicted with such tragedies as the (Tehran) university campus, Tabriz and Khorramabad," he said, referring to attacks by conservative authorities on students in 1999 and 2000. Authorities variously blame domestic economic, social and political conditions and foreign countries taking advantage of those conditions for Iran's brain drain. Last month more than 100 university professors warned in a petition that the recent mass arrest of liberal opposition members could further fuel the phenomenon.