FACTBOX: Five facts on Iran's Mirhossein Mousavi

(Reuters) - Five facts on Mirhossein Mousavi, who claimed victory over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran's election on Friday.

* Mousavi, 67, advocates better ties with Iran's Western foes while rejecting their demand to halt uranium enrichment, the most sensitive element of Iran's nuclear program.

* Prime minister during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, he urges a return to the "fundamental values" of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. While he favored a big role for the state in Iran's war-time economy, he now advocates economic liberalization. He says he would control inflation through monetary policies and would also make life easier for private business.

* The bespectacled, bearded 67-year-old enjoys the support of reformist former President Mohammad Khatami and apparent backing from Khatami's pragmatic predecessor, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani.

* Mousavi says he would seek detente with the West, curb inflation and create jobs if elected. He has promised to change the "extremist" image that Iran earned abroad under Ahmadinejad and has hit out at his profligate spending of petrodollars and cash handouts to the poor, which he says have stoked rising consumer prices.

* Mousavi broke new ground in Iranian politics by having his wife Zahra Rahnavard actively campaigning for him. The couple even held hands at rallies, rare public behavior for politicians in the socially conservative, mainly Shi'ite state.