BAGHDAD, 28 November 2004 — The Iraqi government yesterday brushed aside Sunni Muslim demands to delay the Jan. 30 election, and a spokesman of the majority Shiite community called the date “nonnegotiable.”

Meanwhile, insurgents stepped up attacks, blasting US patrols in Baghdad and killing a US soldier north of the capital.

Clashes also occurred north of Baghdad, where US and Iraqi forces fought a three-hour gunbattle with insurgents who overran a town hall and two police stations, local officials said.

Talk of delaying the election gained momentum after influential Sunni Muslim politicians urged the government to postpone the voting for six months to give authorities time to secure polling stations and to convince Sunni clerics to abandon their call for an electoral boycott.

But the spokesman for interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, told reporters yesterday that the government was sticking by the Jan. 30 date after receiving assurances from the Iraqi Electoral Commission that an election could take place even in Sunni areas wracked by insurgency.

“The Iraqi government is determined ... to hold elections on time,” spokesman Thair Al-Naqib said. “The Iraqi government, led by the prime minister, is calling on all spectra of the Iraqi people to participate in the elections and to contribute in the elections to build a strong democratic country.”

That position was strongly endorsed yesterday by politicians and clerics from the Shiite community, which comprises about 60 percent of Iraq’s nearly 26 million people and which has been long clamoring for an election.

In the Shiite city of Najaf, Mohammed Hussein Al-Hakim, son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Said Al-Hakim, told reporters that the Shiite leadership would not accept a delay and called this position “nonnegotiable.”

He said elections were “the most legitimate way on the international level to express the will of the people” and that “all parties have agreed on this date and we cannot take back this position for any reason.”

In Baghdad, a major Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Republic in Iraq (SCIRI), said that 42 parties and individuals from the Shiite and Turkmen communities had agreed on a statement affirming support for the Jan. 30 date.

SCIRI official Redha Jawad Taqi said the 42 included the Islamic Dawa, the other leading Shiite party, and the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi, whose spokesman Entifadh Qanbar had already criticized the postponement call.

Still, insurgent violence continues to grip the Sunni areas despite the US-led assault this month on the main insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad.

The attack was launched to try to curb the insurgency so that elections could be held nationwide.

An American soldier from the 1st Infantry Division was killed yesterday when a roadside bomb exploded near a US patrol about 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Baghdad, the military said.

Two US military vehicles, including an armored shuttle bus, were damaged by a bomb yesterday on the road to Baghdad International Airport, which the State Department considers one of the most dangerous routes in the country. An Al-Qaeda-affiliated group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Three civilians died and a dozen were injured yesterday in other bomb attacks against US convoys in the Baghdad area, US and Iraqi officials said.

About 100 insurgents overran the city hall and two police stations in Khalis, 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of the capital but were driven off by American and Iraqi forces after a three-hour gunbattle, municipal official Saad Ahmed Abbas said. Al-Jazeera television said three Iraqi security guards were killed.

South of the capital, US, British and Iraqi security forces continued operations against suspected insurgent strongholds near the towns of Latifiyah and Mahmoudiya. A US military spokesman said yesterday a total of 126 suspected insurgents have been arrested since the operation began Tuesday.

In addition to the attacks, officials report a massive intimidation campaign by insurgents who have threatened to kill candidates and others who take part in the January ballot. Sunni clerics have urged a boycott to protest the Fallujah attack.

Although Sunnis comprise only about 20 percent of the population, a widespread boycott by the influential community would cost the new government much needed legitimacy in the eyes of millions of Iraqis.

Shiites have generally refrained from joining the Sunni-led insurgency, believing they will gain power in Iraq anyway through elections because of their force of numbers. Shiite clerics for the most part avoided public criticism of the Fallujah attack.

— Additional input from agencies