Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=2/15/2004

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=IRAN-ELECTION (L-O)

NUMBER=2-313126

BYLINE=KERRY SHERIDAN

DATELINE=CAIRO

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Five hundred and fifty pro-reform candidates have decided to drop out of Iran's coming parliamentary election. Kerry Sheridan reports from V-O-A's Middle East Bureau in Cairo that the decision further reduces the number of reformist candidates seeking office in this week's parliamentary election.

TEXT: A reformist newspaper quoted the Interior Ministry as saying the candidates have decided not to run to protest last month's disqualification of nearly one-third of the election hopefuls.

The candidates who withdrew had been allowed to run by the conservative Guardian Council. They said they pulled out because they feel the election will not be fair.

Iran's student news agency published an open letter from a prominent Iranian dissident, Hashem Aghajari, who said the election spells the end to Iran's reform movement. The jailed academic called for Iranians to protest against totalitarians with what he called, "passive resistance."

Analyst Pakinam El-Sharkawy, a political science professor at Cairo University and an expert on Iran, predicts voter turnout will be low.

/// EL-SHARKAWY ACT ///

There is a lot of frustration within the Iranian population. They (are) beginning to lose hope with both conservatives and moderates and they (are) beginning to get sick of all these games, especially with this economic crisis and so on. So I think regarding all the frustrations that Iranians are living in now that the present election will not reach the old level of 2000.

/// END ACT ///

The Guardian Council, an unelected, overseeing, group of 12 Islamic clerics and jurists, sparked political turmoil in Iran when it banned 25-hundred mostly reformist candidates from running in the February 20th election.

Iran's largest pro-reform party has already promised to boycott the election. Reformists are accusing conservatives of staging a "bloodless coup." They say that by eliminating pro-reform candidates, the Islamic Guardian Council is fixing a conservative takeover of the Iranian parliament. (SIGNED)

NEB/KS/DW/RAE