IRAN: Iranian government officials are likely to drop their threats to resign after the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, moved to defuse a row over parliamentary elections, government sources said.
The resignation threats by ministers and 27 state governors were made in protest at the hardline Guardian Council's decision to disqualify almost half of the 8,200 candidates hoping to stand in parliamentary elections on February 20th.
"To avoid tension in the country, those who have threatened to quit will drop their resignation threats," said one official among at least 16 members of President Mohammad Khatami's cabinet who said this week they would step down.
Most of those disqualified were reformist allies of President Khatami, including more than 80 members of the 290-seat parliament.
The confrontation between reformists and hardliners, the most dramatic since President Khatami carried reformers to power in a 1997 presidential poll, prompted a sit-in protest by dozens of MPs and calls for the elections to be postponed.
But Ayatollah Khamenei, using his overriding political authority, moved to defuse the crisis, calling on the Guardian Council to review the cases of those barred from standing.
A second government source said that following his comments, "those who had threatened to resign will have to withdraw". He said President Khatami would not accept their resignations.
In a further sign that tension was easing, protesting reformists cancelled a large rally scheduled for yesterday, and the dozens of MPs staging a sit-in at parliament said they welcomed the ayatollah's intervention.
"The leader's remarks were the first positive sign of solving the problem and it should stop this illegal process," Mohammad Reza Khatami, brother of the president and one of the disqualified MPs, told reporters.
At stake is control of parliament, which the conservatives lost to reformists in the 2000 elections.
Hardliners fear reformist causes such as a free press, free speech and women's rights will undermine the system of clerical rule in place since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. - (Reuters)