TEHRAN, 9 May 2004 — Iranian conservatives have won a sweeping two-thirds majority of Parliament, according to official election results published yesterday, confirming their grip on power at the expense of the reformist camp.

Results published by the Interior Ministry after Friday’s second round of voting confirmed that conservatives had gained 40 of the 57 seats not awarded in the first round on Feb. 20.

Another eight seats were taken by reformists and nine by independents. Conservatives now control at least 195 out of 290 seats in the Majlis (parliament), compared to 48 for the reformists led by President Mohammad Khatami. Four seats have still to be decided in voting at a later date.

The second round comes 11 weeks after polls which saw reformists routed amid widespread allegations of vote-rigging. Reformists had controlled the assembly since 2000 but their power was decimated after thousands of MPs were banned from contesting the election on the grounds they did not respect the principles of the Islamic republic.

The new Majlis, which takes office on May 27, will leave Khatami a lame duck until presidential polls next year, although what the legislature’s precise policies will be are still unclear. Voting took place in those constituencies where candidates failed to secure 25 percent of the votes cast and was a run-off between the top two.

In the first round 229 deputies were elected, with a coalition of conservatives, religious leaders and centrists gaining around 155 seats, reformists about 40 and the remainder going to independents.

The result of the election was never really in doubt after reformists squandered their majority and failed to deliver on promises of change.

Their fate was sealed after authorities banned some 2,300 reformist candidates on religious and constitutional grounds, sparking one of the worst political crises in the Islamic republic and allegations of a “parliamentary coup”.

Disillusionment with the elimination of the reformists contributed to turnout of just 50.57 percent in the first round, the worst since the 1979 revolution. Friday’s second round attracted little public interest, with most newspapers making no mention of the polls. Only a few carried lists of candidates and manifestos.

The reformist camp, led by Khatami and outgoing Parliament chief Mehdi Karubi, supported only 17 of the 114 candidates running in the second round. Conservatives now control all the levers of state under the authority of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, except the presidency.

Khatami’s mandate expires next year and political maneuvering is already under way to find his replacement but it remains unclear whether the hardliners will try to complete their stranglehold on power.

Voting for the last of the 30 Tehran seats at stake will be put off to the 2005 presidential elections due to financial limitations. Conservatives won the capital’s 29 other seats in February.

The devastating Dec. 26 earthquake at Bam in the southeast of the country has also delayed polling there, and the first round elections in two other constituencies were declared invalid.

Meanwhile, 14 people were killed and 19 others hurt when a truck and bus collided on the road near the central Iranian city of Isfahan, said the state news agency IRNA. The truck swerved into the wrong lane and collided with the bus traveling in the opposite direction, it said, without giving further details.

Iran’s road are among the world’s most dangerous. Most accidents are blamed on reckless driving, badly maintained vehicles or poor roads. An official report cited by IRNA late last month said almost 100,000 people had been killed in accidents on the country’s roads over the past five years, averaging three deaths an hour.

In another incident, a moderate earthquake measuring 4.8 degrees on the Richter scale jolted an area near the city of Kazerun, in Iran’s southern Fars province Saturday morning causing only property damage, the state IRNA news agency said.

In another development, Iran on Friday blocked the adoption of an agenda for a review conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty that must be held next year, diplomatic sources said. A preparatory meeting, held this week at UN headquarters, ended Friday with an agreement on some minimal procedures but without an agenda for the conference.

“Iran almost single-handedly managed to block the adoption of an agenda in the hope of avoiding the conference devoting too much attention to the behavior of those of its members suspected of being proliferators,” a diplomat told AFP. “The United States showed toughness, but Iran did not display any flexibility,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.