Posted on 05/11/2003 5:16:06 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
TEHRAN - Reformists and conservatives in Iran are reportedly working on a compromise deal over two key reform Bills in a bid to avoid a damaging political showdown.
The Bills, which are aimed at boosting moderate President Mohammad Khatami's authority, have become the centrepiece of the rumbling power struggle in the Islamic Republic between elected reformists and conservatives resistant to change.
Radical reformists have threatened to quit parliament if the electoral reform Bill and another Bill aimed at curbing the power of the hardline judiciary are definitively blocked.
They have also called on Mr Khatami to resign should the Bills fail to be passed.
Iran's Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog dominated by conservative clerics, has rejected both pieces of proposed legislation, arguing that they are unconstitutional.
One of the Bills would remove the Guardian Council's right to veto election candidates.
The other Bill would allow Mr Khatami to challenge rulings by the judiciary, another bastion of conservative power in the country of 65 million people.
But Mr Mehdi Karroubi, speaker of Iran's reformist-controlled parliament, said the apparent deadlock over the Bills might still be broken without having to send the dispute on to the country's top arbitration body, the Expediency Council.
'Many mature and realistic officials in both political camps want the issue to be resolved between parliament and the Guardian Council and not to send it to the Expediency Council,' he was quoted as saying by Iran's state-run newspaper.
He said meetings between parliamentary and Guardian Council officials would continue next week.
'I am still hopeful about the results of the meetings,' he said.
He added that officials from both sides had shown flexibility over the electoral reform Bill.
Reformist parliamentarians had agreed to an amendment which would reduce - but not completely remove - the Guardian Council's supervisory role in elections.
A compromise deal on the Bills would be an unusual breakthrough for the normally acrimonious relations between Iran's reformist and conservative camps.
However, some reformist legislators said they were determined to put the decision over the Bills' fate directly to the Iranian people if the Guardian Council refused to pass the legislation.
'First, parliamentarians will confer with the Guardian Council on the Bills ...but if such talks fail, we will hold a referendum,' reformist MP Elaheh Kulai was quoted as saying by the Hambastaegi newspaper.
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