BAGHDAD, 22 November 2004 — The first post-Saddam Hussein elections will be held in Iraq on Jan. 30, it was announced yesterday. Meanwhile, world powers prepared for a conference on the country’s future against a backdrop of unrelenting violence.
“The electoral commission has unanimously decided to consider Jan. 30 as the date for the elections,” commission chairman Abdel Hussein Al-Hindawi told reporters in Baghdad. Ahead of the elections, US and Iraqi troops continued to hunt down insurgents in the capital and other parts of the country following a massive operation in the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah where 1,450 suspects have been rounded up.
Elsewhere, at least 10 people were killed as violence flared in several Sunni towns yesterday.
Several areas of Iraq had become no-go zones in recent months and cast doubt on the feasibility of elections in January, but Iraq’s electoral commission said the vote would go ahead as planned. It will be the first free and multiparty election in decades, with 126 parties and individuals out of 198 applicants already approved to run in the polls to choose a national assembly, a regional parliament for the Kurdish north, and 18 provincial councils.
The elections will mark the next big step in the postwar political process after power was transferred from the US-led occupation to an interim government in June.
There had been growing skepticism about elections being actually held on time, coupled with threats of a boycott by radical Sunni Muslims.
Hindawi called for both Iraqi and international observers to monitor the elections and said he hoped the United Nations would play an “important role”.
The US military has already said that tours of duty could be extended and reinforcements sent to Iraq for the elections.
The announcement will be a boost ahead of a conference in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh opening today which brings regional and international powerbrokers to the same table for the first time since the June power transfer.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said he would seek to muster broader foreign involvement in rebuilding and securing Iraq.
Representatives of G-8 countries, the United Nations, European Union, Arab League, Organization of the Islamic Conference and Iraq’s neighbors are expected to pledge support to UN resolution 1546 on the political process. Iran nevertheless warned that the first day of the conference, which will focus on regional issues, could be the most contentious.
In the northern city of Mosul, US and Iraqi troops continuing to hunt down insurgents said they had found as many as 11 men believed to be Iraqi soldiers executed by rebels.
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s 75-year-old cousin Ghazi, who had been kidnapped together with his wife and pregnant daughter-in-law on Nov. 10, was released by his captors yesterday, a source at the premier’s party said.
In Ramadi, to the west of Fallujah, six people died and a dozen were wounded, a doctor at the city’s hospital said, although it was not known how the casualties occurred.
The US military said it killed three civilians in Ramadi when their vehicle failed to stop at a checkpoint.
In Baiji, north of the capital, three people were killed and eight wounded in clashes between US troops and insurgents, local police said. A rebel leader in the town said that attacks on US troops would continue.
Abu Ali said he had asked civilians living in the central quarter of Baiji where fighting was taking place to leave their homes for their own safety.
Also north of Baghdad, an Iraqi contractor was found shot dead in Balad, police and hospital officials said.
A hospital official said he had been shot in the head and chest. Several Iraqi contractors have been found killed outside the capital.
— Additional input from agencies
