Iran's Khatami doffs clerical garb to donate blood

TEHRAN, July 30 (Reuters)- Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, clad in the Iranian ``Everyman'' garb of grey trousers and a white shirt, donated blood and greeted young children at a Tehran blood clinic on Thursday.

It was the first time the Iranian public saw their president without the long clergyman's robe and black turban which distinguishes him as believed to be a direct descendant of Islam's Prophet Mohammad.

State-run television showed Khatami lying on his back with an intravenous needle in his forearm, his blood dripping into a glass vial.

After the donation, the smiling cleric was shown receiving flowers from young girls in colourful scarves, smiling and kissing them on the forehead.

It was vintage Khatami, who has tried to position himself as a man of the people with media-savvy events like standing at the rear of a lunch queue and travelling by bus on ``clean air day.''

Khatami's predecessor, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, regularly travelled with the pomp and circumstance of most heads of state, replete with police escorts and dozens of bodyguards.

Khatami, taking a page from the populist politician handbook, enjoys glad-handing crowds and carries his own suitcases when he travels.

The blood donation, the first item on Iran's afternoon television news, was also one of the rare occasions a senior Iranian cleric was shown without traditional dress.

Shots of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wearing a khaki military uniform while inspecting battlefields were sometimes broadcast on television during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, when he was president of the Islamic republic.

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