Iran starts registration for parliamentary elections.

Iran started on Saturday the official registration of candidates for the ninth Majlis ( Parliament) elections set to be held in March 2012.

Candidates seeking to be nominated have to go to the interior ministry for registration between Dec. 24 and 30, local media reported.

Potential candidates, who are to be vetted by the Guardian Council (top legislature), must meet some criteria including holding an Iranian citizenship as well as adherence to Islam and the principles of the Islamic Republic.

Last parliamentary elections in Iran were held in March, 2008, when Iranian authorities approved about 4,500 candidates for the 290-seat legislature and barred over 1,700 people on the grounds of lack of loyalty to Islam.

Iran's conservatives, who generally support the country's Islamic establishment, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won an absolute majority of the seats during the 2008 elections, while reformists who wanted better relations with the West won far fewer seats.

Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami said Monday that reformists will not announce candidates for the upcoming elections.

"It was expected that the conditions would be granted (by the government) so that the reformists could participate in the elections, but the conditions were not met," Khatami was quoted by local media as saying.

"The reformists cannot and should not have any candidates for the (upcoming parliamentary elections) ... but it does not mean the boycott of elections," he told reporters at the sidelines of a ceremony.

Earlier Khatami said that reformists could only participate in the elections if all reformist political prisoners were freed and the elections were held with utmost transparency.

On Monday, Mohammad Mousavi-Khoeiniha, the reformist cleric and the secretary general of the Association of Combatant Clerics, also said that reformists have decided not to release the list of candidates for the elections.

Earlier this month, Ali Mohammad Gharibani, head of Iran's Coordination Council of the Reformist Front, said that the front will not endorse any candidates for the elections in March.

Iran's Guardian Council has said that individuals linked to the protests following the 2009 presidential elections are not eligible to run for parliament seats.

Protests gripped Tehran and other Iranian cities after the June- 2009 presidential elections amid allegations that the vote was rigged in favor of the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran's state media said the number of people killed in relevant clashes or in custody rose to about 30 and more than 1,000 protesters and dozens of reformist activists were reportedly arrested during the protests, most of whom the authorities said were later released.

The two reformist candidates for the 2009 presidential elections, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, are currently under house arrest.