BAGHDAD, 29 November 2004 — Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said yesterday that he will meet with “some Iraqi figures residing abroad” not in Jordan as previously reported, his office said.
No date nor venue was announced for the meeting, nor was it clear whom the prime minister would meet.
A statement from the prime minister’s office said Allawi would meet with “some Iraqi figures residing abroad ... to provide the opportunity to participate in the political process and the democratic elections inside Iraq.”
He said reports that the meeting would be held in Jordan were “baseless.”
Jordanian government spokeswoman Asma Khader said that that Jordan has no information about the meeting.
Bahrain offered to host a meeting between the Iraqi government and Iraqis who fled the country after the April 2003 collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The offer was made during last week’s international conference on Iraq held at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.
On Saturday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Bahrain’s offer was timely in light of recent requests by Iraqi Sunni Arab politicians to postpone the Jan. 30 elections to allow for improvements in the security situation and to convince Sunni clerics to drop their demand for a boycott.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s deputy prime minister yesterday said that holding elections in January will be “a serious challenge” but insisted they must go ahead as scheduled. US and Iraqi forces arrested 43 suspected insurgents in the northern city of Mosul, the military said.
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said delaying the vote would have “serious ramifications to the political process” and would bolster the cause of “terrorists.”
“Under the law it cannot be postponed and the government is working on the premise that the elections will be held on time,” Saleh told the British Broadcasting Corp. in London.
Sunni politicians have called for postponing the election because of the security crisis; although the country’s powerful Shiite clergy and the interim government oppose a delay.
A spokesman for Allawi said Saturday that the government was sticking by the Jan. 30 date after receiving assurances from the Electoral Commission that an election could take place even in Sunni areas where insurgents are active.Saleh acknowledged there were security problems in areas of Iraq but said the US and Iraqi takeover of the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah this month denied the terrorists “a major safe haven.”
“Sticking to that timetable will be difficult, will be a serious challenge,” he said. “But delaying elections will be much more difficult because it will have serious ramifications to the political process, to the issue of legitimacy, and surely all of us do not want to give the terrorists the slightest of technical wins in that situation.”
The US military is confident security will be sufficient to hold elections on Jan. 30, but there will be insurgent attacks on the day and conditions won’t be perfect, a US officer said yesterday.
“We’re on track with our campaign plan to pursue the terrorists and set the security conditions for the elections,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, deputy director of operations in Iraq, said.
“We will have a good enough security environment by the end of January so that the majority of the citizens in Iraq can participate in free and fair elections.”
But that did not mean there would not be disruptions and insurgent attacks on the day.
“It will not be a perfect security environment. We fully anticipate that there will be a concerted effort by the insurgents to disrupt those elections,” he said.
“We expect that they will go after polling places. They will try to intimidate the public. They will continue doing what they’ve been doing and escalate those efforts to disrupt.”
The US military has said it intends to take back all rebellious areas before the end of the year so it can hand responsibility over to Iraqi forces in time for the poll.
In many areas of the country that may be possible, but in cities such as Ramadi, Mosul, Baquba, Samarra, parts of Baghdad and areas to the south of the capital, rebels still have a strong presence and it is a race against time to quell them.
Lessel said the US military was gaining momentum in its war against the insurgency, but he dismissed suggestions that a delay to the elections might allow the military to create even better security conditions ahead of the poll. “I don’t think that’s an assumption that can be made,” he said. “I think any slip can potentially be perceived by the insurgents as a success or victory.
