Iranian conservatives won a big majority in parliament after two rounds of elections, according to final results on Saturday, but the chamber could still prove critical of controversial President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Conservatives won 69 percent of the seats, reformists 16 percent and independents more than 14 percent, Interior Minister Mostafa Pour Mohammadi told a news conference.

He was speaking a day after the second round of anelection in which 82 seats in the 290-seat parliament were at stake. The first round on 14 March had already assured conservatives of overall victory.

Pour Mohammadi did not give the number of seats won by each faction. But the percentages mean that conservatives will have around 200 seats in the next parliament, reformists 50 and independents around 40.

"My assessment is that the future parliament will be more capable (than the last), with stronger expertise. I hope there will be stronger interaction between the government and the parliament," he told reporters.

Pre-vote disqualifications

The vote for reformists — whose hopes of mounting a significant challenge were stymied by mass pre-vote disqualifications — appeared to have held up respectably in the second round outside Tehran.

But the reformists fared badly in the run-offs in the capital, with conservatives taking 10 out of the 11 seats having already swept up all 19 of the seats available in the first round, Pour Mohammadi said.

Just one reformist, Ali Reza Mahjoub, was set to sit in the new parliament for Tehran after squeezing into 11th place in the second round, with reformist support hit by a meagre turnout in the capital on Friday.

Controversial policies

A conservative-controlled parliament is in any case not expected to be wholeheartedly supportive of Ahmadinejad, who has alienated many of his fellow conservatives with controversial policies and speeches.

Ahmadinejad faces a re-election battle in the summer of 2009 against a background of discontent over high inflation, and his toughest competition is expected to come from more moderate fellow conservatives.

Economists blame the president's expansionary economic policies for stoking inflation, while his provocative attacks on opponents and frequent changes to his cabinet have also stirred controversy.

Pour Mohammadi is expected to step down just days after the election he was supposed to be organising, in the ninth change to Ahmadinejad's cabinet. The minister said it was up to the president when the change is made.

'Unrealistic campaigning'

The highly respected judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi accused Ahmadinejad of "exaggeration, unrealistic campaigning and sloganeering" in his latest speeches, media reported on Saturday.

In the past week Ahmadinejad has been locked in a bitter public row with parliament speaker Gholam Ali Hadad Adel over implementing past legislation and also replaced his economy minister, Davoud Danesh Jaafari.

As he left office, Jaafari launched a withering attack on Ahmadinejad of a nature rarely seen in Iranian politics, accusing the president of concerning himself only with "peripheral" issues.

The turnout in Friday's polls was 26 percent, Pour Mohammadi said, down sharply on the first round when the authorities hailed participation of around 60 percent as a blow to Iran's Western enemies.

Pour Mohammadi said the final results were based on 287 of the 290 seats. The results from three seats where alleged irregularities took place in the first round have not been validated by the Guardians Council watchdog, he said.

Conservatives in Iran — who prefer to be called "principalists" — advocate strict adherence to the principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the pro-US shah.

Reformists push for greater economic liberalisation accompanied by very cautious social change.

AFP