ANKARA -- A former prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, banned from politics for promoting Islam in strictly secular Turkey, submitted an application Wednesday to stand in general elections in November as an independent candidate, Anatolian News Agency r eported.

The 76-year-old Erbakan wants to stand in the central city of Konya, a conservative Islamist stronghold, the agency said.

The Higher Electoral Board will decide later this month whether he will be allowed to run in the November 3 polls.

The board rejected a similar application by Erbakan in the previous elections in 1999.

Erbakan became Turkey's first Islamist prime minister in 1996, AFP reported.

But he was forced to resign after only a year in office as a result of a harsh military-led secularist campaign, triggered by fears that the government was damaging the Muslim country's secular system and deviating from its traditionally pro-Western path.

The Constitutional Court outlawed Erbakan's Welfare Party in 1998 and banned the veteran leader from politics for five years. The ban ends next year.