By Parisa Hafezi
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian election results on Saturdayshowed conservatives on course to keep control of parliament,but some were expected to join reformists in flaying PresidentMahmoud Ahmadinejad's handling of the economy.
Conservatives have taken 120 seats in the 290-memberassembly against 46 for reformists so far, the state Press TVstation reported, citing the Interior Ministry. Four seats hadgone to independents and 30 more would go to run-off votes.
The Interior Ministry, which supervised Friday's vote, hassaid a final nationwide tally might take a day or two.
Many reformists, trying to capitalise on public discontentover inflation, were disqualified from standing in the polls,but they expect Ahmadinejad to undergo sharper scrutiny even ina parliament dominated by their conservative rivals.
"The president will face more challenges with the nextparliament than he did with the current one," said Mohammad AliAbtahi, a close ally of reformist ex-President MohammadKhatami.
If confirmed, the 46 reformist seats cited by Press TVtakes them beyond the 40 or so they had in the outgoingparliament.
But Iran's Fars News Agency gave a slightly different tallyfor the 170 seats so far decided, saying conservatives had 125and reformists 35, while independents had 10.
Direct comparison with the previous assembly is complicatedby fluid factional loyalties and a large group of independents.
Reformists were upbeat. "We announce with honour that wegained victory in an unequal election," Abdollah Nasseri,spokesman for the reformist coalition, said, adding 70 percentof seats had been "predetermined" for conservatives.
Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi told state TV about70 percent of seats had gone to "principlists" -- a termconservatives use to describe their loyalty to the IslamicRepublic's ideals. He said 178 seats had been decided --without giving a breakdown -- with 56 going to run-off votes.
The minister said final results for Tehran's 30 seats maynot be announced for a day or two. State TV said conservativeswere ahead with more than 20 seats after counting about onethird of the 2 million votes cast in the city.
SPLIT CONSERVATIVES
"The 'principlist' forces have scored very importantvictories in all major Iranian cities," said Ali Larijani,former chief nuclear negotiator and Ahmadinejad rival, who wona seat in Qom, a city south of Tehran.
An Iranian political analyst, who asked not to be named,predicted a rougher ride for Ahmadinejad in the next assembly.
He said splits had opened up among conservatives -- whorange from Islamic revolutionary radicals, like Ahmadinejad, tohis more pragmatic critics -- jockeying for position before the2009 race for the presidency.
Reformists and some conservatives have accused Ahmadinejadof fuelling inflation, now at 19 percent, by lavishly spendingIran's windfall oil revenues on subsidies, loans and handouts.
Pro-reform politicians have also rebuked Ahmadinejad forvitriolic speeches that have kept Iran on a collision coursewith the United Nations over Tehran's disputed nuclear plans.Larijani has also queried the president's style.
However, Ahmadinejad has won public backing from Iran's topauthority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who hasexplicitly endorsed his handling of the nuclear row.
The interior minister put turnout at roughly 60 percent ofthe Islamic Republic's 44 million eligible voters.
The government had called for a high turnout as a show ofdefiance for Iran's "enemies" in the West. Reformists had alsourged their supporters to dent conservative power by voting.
The United States, Iran's harshest Western critic, said thevetting process for candidates meant the outcome of voting inthe world's fourth largest oil-producing country was "cooked".
The Guardian Council, a body of clerics and jurists, barredmany reformists when it screened potential candidates oncriteria such as commitment to Islam and the clerical system.
Washington has led international efforts to penalise Iranfor failing to allay suspicions that it is seeking nuclearweapons. Tehran says its nuclear programme is purely civilian.
(Additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian; Writing byAlistair Lyon and Edmund Blair; Editing by Mary Gabriel)
