TEHRAN, July 28: Iran’s main pro-reform party threatened on Sunday to quit the Islamic regime unless the conservatives who dominate the courts and security forces stop undermining the elected reformist administration.

The Islamic Iran Participation Front insisted it would rather resolve the political crisis by dialogue, but warned it could no longer tolerate the conservatives’ persistent undermining of the policies it was elected to implement.

“We want to work towards agreement and not disagreement, and to hold a dialogue without preconditions in mutual respect,” the party chief Mohammad-Reza Khatami, younger brother of moderate President Mohammad Khatami, said in a statement.

“But if (the conservatives) do not heed the demands of the people that we have already given them a final warning to accept, then we can only withdraw the reformist presence — that it is to say the legitimate elected representation — from the regime.”

At its annual congress earlier this month, the Participation Front issued an ultimatum to conservatives within the Islamic regime to allow it to implement its mandate or face losing all popular legitimacy.

The Front, which holds 130 seats in the 290-seat pro-reform parliament and has five ministers in Khatami’s government, is demanding the “right to call government institutions to account,” particularly the courts and watchdog bodies which have so far blocked all reformist legislation.

The party wants a referendum to demonstrate the popular support for the constitutional changes they are calling for, which would eliminate the conservatives’ unelected stranglehold on power.

The reformers accuse the conservatives of seeking to turn Iran into a “dictatorship” by undermining the democratic elements in its constitution, which call for an elected president, parliament and municipalities.

The Islamic Republic’s laws give the conservative-controlled Council of Guardians the right to vet all candidates for public office, and Khatami junior charged that they intended to use it to “eliminate reformist candidates” in the next parliamentary elections in 2004.

The president’s own mandate runs out the following year, and the constitution bars him from seeking a third term of office, something his brother accused the conservatives of planning to “take advantage of” to impose their own candidate as successor.

“We face a very serious crisis of political legitimacy and public confidence,” said another senior Front official, Abbas Abdi.

Young people, who make up the vast majority of Iran’s population, no longer have confidence in the conservative clergy, Abdi charged, citing an opinion poll suggesting “just 6.5 per cent” of students thought they “spoke in the name of true religion”.

In a fresh blow to the reformers, a Tehran court Saturday banned the long tolerated Iran Freedom Movement (IFM) and jailed 33 of its members, who had been detained in a roundup last year.

Mohammad-Reza Khatami told the state IRNA news agency he hoped the convictions would be overturned on appeal.

Meanwhile, a day after the ban, the leader of a main opposition movement vowed on Sunday to defy a ban on his group ordered as part of a crackdown on reforms.

The feared Revolutionary Court sentenced the dissidents affiliated to Ebrahim Yazdi’s Iran Freedom Movement to up to 10 years in jail on Saturday for allegedly trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic, and outlawed the movement.

Yazdi, a former foreign minister, denounced the “heavy-handed” sentences against his fellow activists and called for the country’s top security body to reverse the ban.

“Iran’s constitution clearly states that only civic courts, and not revolutionary courts, have the authority to dissolve a political party, and only after a public trial and in the presence of a jury ,” he said.

“We still consider the party as legal and will continue activities until a final ruling is issued,” he said.—AFP/Reuters