TEHRAN, 31 January 2004 — The Guardian Council, Iran’s conservative political watchdog, has rejected a call from the pro-reform Interior Ministry for a delay in next month’s parliamentary elections, the student news agency ISNA said yesterday.
Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mussavi-Lari on Thursday asked for the elections to be delayed, in a letter to the council which has banned thousands of mainly pro-reform candidates from standing in the Feb. 20 elections.
The reformists vowed to boycott the elections unless the council withdrew its mass disqualification of liberal candidates. “If protests for fair and free elections fail, such elections will be illegitimate,” the leader of Islamic Iran Participation Front, the largest reformist party, Mohammad Reza Khatami, said.
The Guardian Council has disqualified more than a third of the 8,200 candidates who filed papers to stand in the elections. The council has reinstated more than 860 candidates.
