YOUNG IRANIANS FILL OUT VOTING FORMS, 1999-02-26 (photo)

Young Iranians prepare to vote in the country's first local elections, part of ambitious political reforms fostered by President Mohammad Khatami to challenge the centralised grip of conservative clerical establishment 26 February. Almost 300,000 candidates, from clean-shaven aristocrats in ties to bearded Islamic revolutionaries and Western-trained yuppies, are vying for 197,000 seats on village, town and city councils in what officials have billed as Iran's biggest experiment in grassroots democracy and decentralisation. Voting is allowed from the age of fifteen upwards. FMS