TEHRAN, Iran — Scores of reformist lawmakers said Tuesday that this month's parliamentary elections should be postponed, while Iran's reformist and hard-line leaders sought to resolve a crisis that has paralyzed the nation's political activities with elections less than two weeks away.

The Feb. 20 polls are jeopardized by boycott calls prompted by the hard-line Guardian Council's disqualification of thousands of reformists who applied to run for office. The disqualified candidates include 80 sitting lawmakers, and efforts to reinstate all candidates thus far have failed.

Saeed Pourazizi, a top official at the presidency, told The Associated Press that Khatami and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's hard-line supreme leader, were expected to meet later Tuesday.

The meeting is considered crucial because Khamenei appoints the Guardian Council's 12 members and has the power to overrule any legal body in Iran. The council also controls the election date.

In a Tuesday meeting, more than 70 reformist lawmakers urged Khatami to push for a postponement of the polls, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The lawmakers also told Khatami that negotiations with hard-liners over the election must include the reinstatement of all the barred potential candidates, IRNA quoted Mohammad Reza Khatami, vice speaker of the parliament and the president's brother, as saying.

Less than one-third of the disqualified candidates have been reinstated.

"We insisted on two demands: Elections must be postponed and all candidates disqualified illegally must be reinstated," IRNA quoted vice speaker Khatami, who also was disqualified, as saying.

President Khatami's Cabinet ministers say they support delaying the election until they are assured it will be free and fair. The president has vowed his government will "hold only competitive, free and fair elections."

The crisis began last month when the Guardian Council disqualified more than 3,600 of the 8,200 people filing papers to run in the polls.

After protests and an opinion from Khamenei, the council last week restored 1,160 low-profile candidates to the list — still keeping more than 2,400 candidates out.

Reformists say the council disqualified liberal candidates to fix the election in favor of conservatives. The hard-liners repeatedly have thwarted President Khatami's efforts toward greater democracy and a relaxation of the Islamic social code.

The council denies political motives and argues that the disqualified candidates lacked the criteria to stand for election.

Some 124 lawmakers in the 290-seat Majlis, or parliament, resigned Sunday, saying there was no point in holding elections whose outcome was inevitable.

Iran's largest reformist party, Islamic Iran Participation Front, said Monday it would boycott the polls. Vice speaker Khatami is the party's leader.

Without that party's participation, hard-line candidates likely would retake control of parliament. Reformists had won the parliament in 2000 for the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and used it as a platform to press for social and political reforms.