IRAN - Feb. 4 - Theologians Want Culture Minister Ousted.

Witnesses say hundreds of theologians and seminary students rallied in the holy Shiite city of Qom, in the 2nd day of protests against what they say are lax cultural policies. They say the crowd packed Qom's Azam mosque to demand the resignation of the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Ayatollah Mohajerani, and the imposition of tighter controls over the country's independent press. (The rally began on Feb. 3 against a newspaper cartoon the seminary students deemed offensive to a prominent hard-line theologian, Ayatollah Mohammed Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi. But it stretched into Feb. 4 after a number of demonstrators spent the night in the mosque.) The renewed demonstration also takes aim at the cultural policies of moderate Pres. Khatami. 'IRNA' says worshipers at Tehran's Feb. 4 prayers took to the city streets of the capital in protest against the cartoon. Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, the prayer leader of Qom, tells the crowd at the mosque: "At the time of the shah, no one dared insult theologians. But today they are being insulted". Meshkini, who also heads the Assembly of Experts charged with supervising the supreme theological leader, calls on the crowd of mostly young seminarians to remain calm. He says: "Although we do not accept the current cultural climate, we must keep calm". (Conservatives in control of the judiciary have closed a number of pro-reform newspapers on charges of insulting Islamic values, but they have failed to put a dent in the independent press, fostered by Khatami as part of his drive for a civil society. The Qom protests began with demands for official action against 'Azad' for publishing the cartoon which demonstrators say targeted Mesbah-Yazdi. The cartoon showed a large figure, with a dollar sign inside his stomach, clubbing a scrawny journalist and demanding: "Where have you hidden the money?" Mesbah-Yazdi, a leading conservative thinker, had been quoted as saying that a former head of the CIA had travelled to Iran with a suitcase full of dollars to finance reformist journalists and other "cultural agents". Reformists have ridiculed the allegations and accused hard-liners of using public funds for their own political aims.