Khatami sweeps to victory in Iran poll

Reformist supporters of Iran's President Mohammad Khatami were last night celebrating a comprehensive election victory, as partial results suggested voters had given the conservative establishment a bloody nose in Friday's poll.

Of the 19.5 million votes declared by 3pm yesterday, Mr Khatami had close to 16 million, more than 77 per cent of the vote. If reflected nationwide, this pattern is expected to give him more than 22 million votes, and a big increase on the 69 per cent he got when he was first elected president, in 1997.

By contrast, his closest rival, Ahmad Tavakoli, a British-educated economist, had a mere 15 per cent of the votes. The remaining eight candidates, all of them conservative-backed, could only muster around 5 per cent between them.

Akbar Nabavi, a spokesman at Mr Tavakoli's campaign headquarters, told The Independent on Sunday that Mr Tavakoli's legal advisers were investigating "the numerous reports of irregularities".

But Seyed-Reza Zavare'i, a member of the conservative watchdog which has the authority to declare the results invalid, said he thought these irregularities would not be serious enough to "warrant the cancellation of results".

Last night, jubilant reformists predicted that Mr Khatami's victory would lend him momentum in his struggle against Iran's powerful but unelected establishment, which has thwarted his attempts to reform Iran's austere theocracy.

In the past four years, the President has seen key supporters jailed, and friendly newspapers banned. Reformist bills enacted in parliament have been shot down by clerics.

Fatemeh Haghighatju, a reformist deputy, warned the establishment to heed the results: "All parts of the regime had better accept the demands of the people. Reform needs to flow into all parts of the regime."