Iran Pols Protest Ban On Liberals

Iran's provincial governors escalated the dispute over next month's elections by declaring Wednesday they would not allow polling unless conservative clerics reverse their disqualification of liberal candidates.

While Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the power to overrule the governors, their declaration suggests that if the hard-liners do not back down, they will have to resort to extraordinary measures to hold legislative elections set for Feb. 20.

The conservative Guardian Council has disqualified more than a third of 8,200 candidates — all of them liberals and including 80 sitting lawmakers. The move has triggered Iran's biggest political crisis in years, with reformers accusing conservatives of trying to skew elections.

"All provincial governors have announced unanimously that, under present circumstances, there will be no possibility of holding elections," Interior Ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani told The Associated Press.

He said the governors made the decision at a meeting in Tehran that ended on Wednesday night.

Earlier Wednesday, Iran's largest group of pro-reform students urged people to boycott next month's elections to protest the disqualifications. It was the first time any political group has called for a boycott since the crisis erupted.

President Mohammad Khatami tried to head off a boycott of the legislative elections on Feb. 20, telling reporters he would strive to reverse the disqualifications down to the last unfairly treated candidate.

"There is no possibility of fair and free elections," the student movement, the Office for Fostering Unity, said in a statement carried on the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

"Considering that people's vote has no affect on the establishment, and there is no way to hold fair and free elections, there is no justification for people to participate in this election," the students said in their statement.

The students praised reformist lawmakers who have been staging sit-in protests in the parliament building since clerics announced the disqualifications earlier this month.

"Just as they've sincerely resisted and have sworn to defend the nation's rights, they are expected to resist participating in such (sham) elections," the students said of the legislators.

By Ali Akbar Dareini