Iran's hard-line Guardian Council defended Sunday its disqualification of prospective candidates for next month's parliamentary elections, further deepening the political crisis that has prompted sit-ins and warnings by the government that it won't hold sham elections. 

"We claim that the Guardian Council has constantly implemented the law. ... Hues and cries will have no impact on our interpretation of the law," Guardian Council spokesman Ebrahim Azizi told reporters.

The Guardian Council has triggered a crisis by disqualifying more than a third of the 8,200 people who applied to stand in the February 20 elections.

State media say the disqualified fell short on the necessary criteria, but reformists say the move was political and intended to skewer the elections in favor of conservatives.

On Saturday, reformist Deputy Interior Minister Morteza Moballegh, who is Iran's chief of elections, warned he would not allow next month's legislative elections to proceed unless hard-liners retracted their mass disqualification of reformists who'd hoped to run, including more than 80 sitting reformist lawmakers.

About 80 reformist lawmakers, who began holding daily sit-ins last Sunday to protest the disqualifications, took their weeklong protest against the Guardian Council a step further on Saturday when they began holding dawn-to-dusk fasts.

"The Guardian Council won't back down at all," Azizi told a press conference. The comments dashed hopes of a breakthrough after Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the Guardian Council on Wednesday to reconsider the disqualifications and laid down criteria that appeared to be easier

Iran's 27 provincial governors vowed to resign today unless disqualifications are reversed.

(China Daily January 19, 2004)