TEHRAN, Jan 22: Iran's political crisis deepened on Thursday as 54 MPs threatened to boycott next month's parliamentary elections if voters were not given a free choice of candidates and other reformists were beaten up by hardline thugs.

"We ... swear that if the rights of the candidates in the legislative elections are not guaranteed we will not take part in elections where the free choice of voters is trampled," 54 members of the Majlis said in a statement.

"We bind ourselves not to sit in parliament ... if the elections amount to nominations," they added. The 54 were continuing to canvas other reformist members of the 290-seat parliament on Thursday evening to join their boycott threat.

They also vowed not to sit in the outgoing parliament between the February 20 elections and the opening of the new assembly in June, potentially paralysing the legislature for months.

The 12-member Guardians Council, which screens all legislation and political candidates, plunged Iran into a serious crisis when it disqualified 3,605 of the 8,157 people seeking to stand for the parliament because they allegedly failed to satisfy Islamic requirements.

Most were reformists, including senior figures close to President Mohammad Khatami and 83 incumbent lawmakers. Hours before the reformist MPs boycott ultimatum expired, Iranian hardliners beat up speakers at a meeting to protest against the blacklist.

Some 200 members of the radical Islamic Hezbollah movement burst into the meeting in the ultra-conservative town of Hamedan in western Iran late Wednesday, the state news agency IRNA reported.

They injured a number of speakers, including student leader Said Razavi Fagih, reformist MP Hossein Loghmanian and Hossein Mojahed, a head of the main pro-reform party, Islamic Iran Participation Front, IRNA said.

The reformist daily Yas-e No reported that Mojahed was hospitalised with his nose and an arm broken. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week ordered the Guardians Council, all of whose members he directly or indirectly appoints, to be less stringent in its vetting procedure in an apparent attempt to resolve the crisis.

The council has since reinstated some 300 candidates, but none of them were sitting MPs. Several dozen reformists MPs were also Thursday continuing a sit-in protest launched when the Guardians Council issued its blacklist on January 11 and triggered charges of an attempted "coup" in the Islamic republic.

The Guardians Council has until January 30 to inform the interior ministry, which is in charge of organising the polls, of the final approved list of candidates, according to election officials.

They said commissions have been set up to re-examine the vetting process and that their decisions would be "announced gradually over the coming days". According to Tehran newspapers, five of Iran's vice presidents, including Massumeh Ebtekar, and six ministers, including Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mussavi-Lari, have handed in their resignations amid the firestorm.

However, Khatami himself was upbeat on Wednesday, saying at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that he had no plans to resign and that the crisis was moving towards a settlement.

"I still intend now to carry on with my duties and service to the people," the reformist president said. "The course of the events is going, hopefully through the grace of God, towards such a free and competitive election."However, protests against the blacklist look set to continue from pro-reform quarters.-AFP