BAGHDAD, 5 January 2005 — Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said yesterday elections will take place on time at the end of January after another minister said they might be delayed to placate opposition from the Sunni community.

“The official position is that elections will take place on schedule and there has been no decision to delay or postpone them,” Zebari told reporters.

On Monday Defense Minister Hazem Al-Shaalan said the elections may be delayed if Sunni groups, who have vowed to boycott the vote, could be convinced to take part.

“We have asked our Arab brothers, particularly in Egypt and Gulf countries, to get Iraqi Sunnis to participate in the elections and if such a participation requires a delay to the election date, they could be delayed,” he told AFP in an interview in Cairo.

Both Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and US President George W. Bush have been adamant about holding the legislative vote on Jan. 30 despite the mounting violence.

Calls to Postpone Iraqi Elections Grow

More Iraqi interim government officials are calling for the postponement of Jan. 30 elections to ensure a higher Sunni voter turnout, a sign that a campaign of violence might be taking its toll on Iraqi resolve. The country’s electoral commission, however, insists that voting take place as scheduled.

Sunni Arab clerics have called for a boycott and Iraq’s largest Sunni political party announced it was pulling out of the race because of poor security that has seen insurgents kill scores of Iraqi security forces, as well as several election officials, in recent weeks.

Several proposals have been floated lately to counter the threat of a low Sunni turnout that would undermine the legitimacy of the vote — the country’s first free elections since monarchy in 1958. Iraqis are to choose a legislative assembly to draft a constitution.

Shaalan told reporters in Cairo Monday that he has asked Egypt to try to persuade the Sunnis to participate in the elections.

“And if they agreed, then we could postpone the date to let all Iraqis go to the polls in one day,” he said.

It is not clear, however, who the Egyptians would negotiate with — or if they would in fact take up the offer — in the absence of a definitive Sunni leadership in Iraq that parallels the hierarchal Shiite religious authority. The Egyptian government, known for its crackdown on its own Muslim Brotherhood movement, is also likely to refuse to hold talks with a party like the Iraqi Islamic Party that withdrew from the race to convince it to reverse its decision.

Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations suggested the election could be delayed by two or three weeks. In an opinion piece in The Washington Post last week, Samir Al-Sumaidaie proposed that idea and a host of others, including reserving some seats for groups who do poorly if their supporters don’t vote — a clear reference to the Sunnis.

Al-Sumaidaie suggested a number of seats could be left vacant for the Sunni provinces, where elections could be held after Jan. 30.

“Such a solution would have the merit of satisfying all those who want elections as soon as possible, thus denying terrorists a victory while producing a legitimate elected government that could focus on stabilizing the country,” he wrote.

But Fareed Ayar, a spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission, seemed adamant that there would be no delay.

“The commission is still working on holding the elections on its scheduled time and according to the timetable we have,” Ayar said Monday.

Commenting on the floating proposals to postpone the elections, including the defense minister’s, Ayar said the commission has not been officially notified of any such ideas.

“We read and hear about those statements in the newspapers and the media like others, but we have not formally received anything,” Ayar said.

Cairo-based political analyst Wahid Abdel Meguid downplayed calls for postponing the elections to reach out to Sunnis, saying such attempts “do not matter much in the Iraqi political arena, where the powerful players, namely the Shiite leadership is insistent on holding the elections on time.”

“It is a last try, and it could be sincere,” Abdel Meguid said. “But it pales amid the majority’s stance.”

A US Embassy spokesman said there has been no talk between the Americans and Iraqi officials on delaying the vote.