TEHRAN, Feb 5: Some 130 pro-reform MPs announced they would go ahead with their resignation from the Iranian parliament and a boycott of the Feb 20 polls after conservatives reinstated just 51 of some 2,500 candidates barred from standing.

"In the light of the news that this illegal process is continuing without fundamental change, we cannot take part in the Feb 20 elections which will not be free but will be unfair and unjust," said a statement put out by reformist MPs who have been mounting a sit-in at parliament since Jan 11.

"We unmasked a parliamentary coup which had been in preparation for two years, but the body which organized this coup is still hoping to carry it off by semi-legal means," the MPs said.

The deputies said they would now end their sit-in in parliament and resign their seats after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei failed to secure more movement from the Guardians Council, a conservative-controlled vetting body.

A spokesman for the council said the body had not finished reviewing candidacies, denying reformist claims that it had given up after reinstating just 51 candidates.

"The review is not over," Reza Zavarehi, deputy head of the Guardians Council, told the student news agency ISNA. "The Guardians Council has until Feb 9 in the evening to announce its decision."

Earlier, Mohammad Reza Khatami, the head of the main reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front and brother of President Mohammad Khatami, said the Council had reinstated just 51 of some 2,500 candidates it had barred.

"According to the information available to us, they have reinstated 51 candidates, eight or nine of them sitting MPs," he said.

Mr Khatami said that "after studying more than 120 cases submitted by the intelligence ministry, the Guardians Council has declined to hear any more." As a result, the party's promised boycott of the polls would go ahead, he said, adding: "It's the worst possible outcome." -AFP