20 January 2004	Tuesday	27 Ziqa'ad 1424

TEHRAN, Jan 19: President Mohammad Khatami's political party has threatened to boycott Iran's parliamentary elections unless bans on hundreds of aspiring liberal candidates are promptly reversed, newspapers and officials said on Monday.

The hardline Guardian Council - an unelected body with sweeping powers - last week announced it had barred nearly half the 8,200 hopefuls who wanted to run in the Feb 20 vote. But Guardian Council officials on Monday said many of those originally disqualified would eventually be allowed to stand. "A large number of candidates whose qualifications have not been approved... will be approved after reviewing their cases," Ahmad Azimizadeh, head of the council's election supervisory board in Tehran, told the official IRNA news agency.

Whether the revised candidate lists will be enough to satisfy reformers remained in doubt. "Our demand is for free elections," Mohammad Reza Khatami, brother of the president and deputy parliament speaker, told IRNA. "If this move is not reversed, no one will vote in the elections," he said.

The mass veto of candidates has prompted threats to resign by ministers and state governors and led dozens of liberal MPs to stage an eight-day sit-in at parliament.

Reformists accuse the council of trying to help hardliners regain control of parliament, which they lost in 2000 elections. Conservatives opposed to any watering down of Iran's Islamic values have used their stronghold in institutions such as the judiciary and the Guardian Council to scupper most of President Khatami's attempts at reform since his 1997 election win.

The president's pro-reform League of Combatant Clerics, following a meeting on Sunday, declared: "If the current situation, under which not all legal (political) factions can compete freely, continues, there is no reason for the League to take part in the parliamentary elections," liberal newspapers reported.

SERIOUS THREAT: A government source said the president and Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi were at Sunday's party meeting and fully backed the decision to threaten to boycott the vote. "It's a serious threat," he said.

However, unfulfilled threats to resign or boycott elections have become so commonplace from reformists in recent years that most Iranians no longer take them seriously.

In an interview with London's Guardian newspaper, published on Monday, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said President Khatami should now make good on his previous threats to quit.

"President Khatami said himself that if he couldn't pass measures because of the Guardian Council he would resign," the Iranian human rights lawyer said. "But still he has not. I think he should fulfil his promise," she said.

Few analysts expect leading reformists, including the president, to resign over the political standoff. In an apparent bid to defuse the election row, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all state affairs, last week urged the Guardian Council to review the list of disqualified candidates.

The Guardian Council said on Sunday it was following President Khamenei's advice but would not be pressured into backing down. The council has until the end of the month to review 3,100 appeals lodged by disqualified candidates.

Reformist MPs expect the council to lift the bans on most reformist candidates while excluding a small number of outspoken liberals. -Reuters