BAGHDAD, 19 December 2005 — A German hostage was released yesterday after spending nearly a month in captivity, while US Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a surprise visit to Iraq and suggested the country’s parliamentary election could open the way for an eventual withdrawal of American troops.
Violence flared around Iraq yesterday as a string of attacks killed about two-dozen people, most of them in the capital.
Susanne Osthoff, 43-year-old aid worker and archaeologist, was in the German embassy in Baghdad after being freed following her Nov. 25 kidnapping in northern Iraq along with her driver. Speaking in Berlin, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier did not release any details about her release and said “our impression after talking to her is that she is in good physical condition.”
Cheney’s visit, under heavy security, was so secret that Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari was surprised when he met him at the US ambassador’s residence in the heavily fortified Green Zone.
His one-day tour came just ahead of an address by President George W. Bush’s on Iraq and just a few days after the Dec. 15 elections — which were marked by a strong turnout.
“The participation levels all across the country were remarkable,” Cheney told reporters after an hour-long briefing from American military commanders. “And that’s exactly what need to happen as you build a political structure in a self-governing Iraq that can unify the various segments of the population and ultimately take over responsibility for their own security.”
Al-Jaafari told Cheney that he estimated a record 70 percent of Iraq’s 15 million registered voters had gone to the polls. He also described 2005 as “the most important in Iraq’s history.”
“We have been able to move forward several decades. The year 2005 is the most important in the history of Iraq in terms of productivity, of the establishment of the democratic process, the establishment of the constitution, the establishment of the Iraqi parliament.”
Iraq’s election commission said that it had received raw preliminary results in the form of tally sheets from seven provinces representing about 70 percent of the total vote. Commission official Safwat Rashid said they included Baghdad, Babil, Karbala, Najaf and Irbil, Anbar and Kirkuk and that the rest were “on their way.”
He added that today “we’ll be able to provide you with 80 percent of the results for Baghdad province. The rest will be completed in the coming days.”
Rashid added the commission had so far received about 345 complaints, more than half of them regarding violations of campaigning rules. Other complaints were about voter’s rolls and some concerned allegations of interference by the party representatives, police or elections workers.
The commission began looking into the complaints yesterday.
“Some of the complaints are minor and others may be grave enough to cancel the results of a ballot box,” he said.
Those complaints have to be dealt with before a final result is released, which officials have said would take up about 10 days.
The big turnout — particularly among Sunni Arabs who boycotted January’s election for an interim legislature — has raised expectations that increased political participation may undermine the Sunni-led insurgency and allow US troops to begin pulling out next year.
Shiites account for about 60 percent of the country’s estimated 27 million people, compared with 20 percent for Sunni Arabs. Both Shiite and Sunni political leaders have said they likely will have to form a coalition government together.
At least one hard-line Sunni Arab politician, Saleh Al-Mutlaq, said yesterday the strong turnout was a sign that the insurgency was ready to participate in the political process. A number of militant groups pledged not to attack polling stations to allow Sunni Arabs to vote.
Al-Mutlaq said a coalition of all groups was necessary, otherwise the “scheme of dividing Iraq on the basis of Shiites and Sunnis, Kurds and Arab is looming.” He charged, without providing details, that Sunni voters were intimidated in the Shiite-dominated south.
A series of attacks late Saturday and early Sunday pierced three days of relative calm that followed the Dec. 15 elections.
Most of the people killed in yesterday’s violence, which included two suicide bombings, were police officers. It came after authorities eased stringent security measures put in place for the elections and traffic returned to normal on the first full working day since the vote.
A ban on vehicles was lifted and the country’s borders reopened Saturday, although the frontier with Syria — a major inroad for foreign fighters — remained closed.
