"It is supposed that all of us will go together," said Abtahi (AFP)

TEHRAN, January 21 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A number of Iranian ministers and vice-presidents submitted their resignations in protest at the mass disqualification of candidates from next month's election, a top Iranian official confirmed on Wednesday, January 21.

President Mohammad Khatami himself is ready to walk out unless the Guardian Council reviews the ban, Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"It is supposed that all of us will go together," Abtahi said, adding reigned ministers would await the final decision of the Guardians Council.

"It is natural that they wait for the outcome of the work" of the Guardians Council, Abtahi said, without naming the cabinet members who had decided to resign.

The conservative political watchdog has moved to bar large numbers of reformists from contesting the February 20 parliamentary polls.

Abtahi, an outspoken reformist who is also believed to be among those ready to step down, did not say whether the ministers and vice-presidents had set a deadline, but did assert that reformists in office were "determined".

"I hope that with the directives given by the supreme leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) we will have a more favorable climate for free elections," he said.

Abtahi said that with the current levels of disqualifications, it was impossible for reformists to contest even 180 out of the 290 seats in the Majlis.

"It would be a shame for a great revolution, on the eve of its 25th anniversary, to have such a crisis," he lamented.

But the picture is still grim for defusing the tension, as the Council failed to implement directives of the supreme leader.

"Since the declarations of the supreme leader and the meeting of the president of the Islamic republic and parliament with the Guardians Council, we have seen no action on the part of the Guardians Council that goes in the direction of what the supreme leader said," Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mussavi Lari told the student news agency ISNA.

Earlier this month, the electoral vetting arm of the Guardian Council disqualified more than 3,500 of the 8,000 or so candidates from standing in next month's elections.

Since then, around 80 of the banned lawmakers have refused to leave the Iranian parliament, the Majlis.

The current parliament is dominated by reformists who have won all major national elections since 1997, but they have been able to achieve little in office because of obstruction by entrenched conservatisms, according to the BBC News Online.

The main reformist party in the country had earlier warned that it may boycott the general election if too many of its members are barred from standing.

The current crisis could result in a low turnout on 20 February, which might secure an easy victory for the conservatives.