Iran's President Mohammad Khatami rules out quitting over Vote Row by Parinoosh Arami And Parisa Hafezi Reuters 3:10am 22nd Jan, 2004   21 Jan 2004    TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami on Wednesday ruled out resigning over a ban on liberal candidates standing in parliamentary elections and said he would do all he could to ensure a free and fair vote next month.    "I have the intention to continue my task and my service to the people," Khatami said in an interview with Swiss TV SF DRS's Tageschau news bulletin, which provided a transcript of his comments translated into German.    Earlier on Wednesday Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi told reporters Khatami and his reformist government were ready to quit over the hardline Guardian Council's decision to bar nearly half of 8,200 hopefuls from the February 20 vote.    Abtahi later clarified to Reuters that his remarks repeated a threat by senior government officials last week and previous comments by Khatami that reformists should either stick together or leave together.    Tired of resignation threats and failed efforts at reform in the face of resistance from conservative clerics, many Iranians have lost faith in Khatami, elected in a 1997 presidential vote.    Asked if he thought the vote would be free and fair, Khatami, who is due to address the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later on Wednesday, said: "Yes, I hope so. All my efforts will go in this direction."    U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday he was watching developments in Iran and hoped there would be fair elections."I hope they will be able to find a way to resolve their differences so that one can have free and fair elections with participation of all the parties," he said after meeting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in southern Germany.    Other officials played down talk of a political crisis and said they were optimistic that talks between reformists and the Guardian Council would yield results.    NO SIGNIFICANCE    "I am convinced that this crisis, if you want to call it that, will be resolved and has no significance," Vice President for Physical Training Mohsen Mehralizadeh told reporters after meeting Austrian President Thomas Klestil in Vienna on Wednesday.    Abtahi said the row could be defused if the Guardian Council, an unelected body of conservative clerics with sweeping powers, followed the advice of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and revised the disqualifications.    Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari said the Guardian Council should start by re-admitting, as a good-will gesture, 618 candidates who had been cleared to run in previous elections.    "We are trying to hold legal elections under acceptable conditions," he told the ISNA students news agency    Khamenei, who has the last word on all state matters, recommended last week that previous candidates should be allowed to run unless there were solid proofs against them.    Around 80 reformist MPs have been barred and have staged a sit-in in parliament for 11 days. The Guardian Council announced on Tuesday it had reversed 200 of the candidate bans, about five percent of those it had originally disqualified.    Reformists, who hold about two-thirds of the 290 seats, accuse the Guardian Council of trying to help conservatives reverse their defeat in 2000 parliamentary elections.    Reformist parties, including Khatami's, have threatened to boycott the vote unless the bans are overturned.    (Additional reporting by Tom Armitage in Zurich, Louis Charbonneau in Vienna)
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