AMMAN/BAGHDAD, 23 January 2005 — The registration deadline for Iraqis voting abroad in their country’s Jan. 30 election was yesterday extended by two days amid low turnout in some of the 14 countries where voter registration centers were established.
The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration’s Iraq’s Out of Country Program said by Thursday, the fourth day of registration, only about 93,000 of the estimated one million eligible voters overall had registered.
“We are extending our operation in an effort to provide Iraqi voters with as much access to our centers as possible,” IOM head Peter Erben said in a statement sent to reporters. “We are hopeful that we will see a significant increase over this weekend that many more Iraqis will come forward to participate in this historic opportunity,” he told the BBC’s Today program yesterday.
Registration had been set to close today but the IOM said it would remain open until Tuesday at the 74 registration centers signing up voters, many of whom fled into exile during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
The IOM has also eased registration rules by accepting an Iraqi passport instead of at least two documents to prove their identity and extended operating hours at polling centers in several countries.
Amman-based Western diplomatic sources said turnout was behind the moves. In Jordan, for example, only around 5,000 of at least 150,000 eligible voters had registered. The Jan. 30 elections will pick a 275-member Parliament which will in turn select a Cabinet and oversee the drafting of a permanent constitution.
Registration began on Monday in 14 countries — Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. Countries with the largest numbers of Iraqis are Syria with an estimated 250,000 Iraqi voters, the United States with at least 200,000 and Britain with 150,000. Voters can cast ballots at the same centers where they registered to vote from Jan. 28-30.
Iraqis, however, continued heading in droves for Jordan yesterday. Jordanian and Iraqi media reported constant queues at border crossings, with entire families departing. Iraqis were taking advantage of four holidays during the Eid Al-Adha sacrificial feast and three free days during the elections to avoid attacks threatened by terrorist groups.
Meanwhile, 12 election offices were set up in Jordan for Iraqi citizens to vote for three days beginning next Friday. Amman had been designated the collation point for results from 13 other countries where Iraqi expatriates can vote, Erben said.
In another development, Iraq’s Interior Minister Falah Al-Naquib said yesterday there was no arrest warrant for Ahmed Chalabi after the country’s defense minister warned the maverick politician would be jailed for slandering the government. “I didn’t receive any warrants of this sort,” Naquib told a press conference in Baghdad.
The denial of a warrant came after Defense Minister Hazem Al-Shaalan said the Baghdad government would shortly arrest one-time Pentagon favorite Chalabi for staining his ministry’s reputation.
“We will arrest him and hand him to Interpol... He sought to tarnish (the image) of the Defense Ministry and ... the reputation of the defense minister,” Shaalan told Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television late Friday.
Shaalan did not say how Chalabi had tried to defame him, but a spokesman for Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress told Al-Jazeera the outburst dealt with allegations Chalabi made about the secret transfer of millions of dollars out of the country. Shaalan’s comments put an unwanted spotlight on the financial dealings of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s government, raising questions about its conduct.
Adding fuel to the fire, The New York Times reported that Allawi, Shaalan and a small circle of council members sent $300 million to a bank in Lebanon last week. Iraqi officials told the Times the money had been sent out to buy tanks and other weapons from arms dealers for the Iraqi army, but the covert nature of the deal had raised eyebrows.
Ironically, Chalabi, a dark horse candidate for prime minister in the next government, has long been dogged by allegations of corruption and was convicted by a Jordan court for embezzling funds from the collapsed Petra bank.
The White House has scrapped its list of Iraq allies known as the 45-member “coalition of the willing,” which Washington used to back its argument that the 2003 invasion was a multilateral action, an official said in Washington on Friday. The senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the White House replaced the coalition list with a smaller roster of 28 countries with troops in Iraq sometime after the June transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government.
The official could not say when or why the administration did away with the list of the coalition of the willing. The coalition, unveiled on the eve of the invasion, consisted of 30 countries that publicly offered support for the United States and another 15 that did not want to be named as part of the group. Former coalition member Costa Rica withdrew last September under pressure from voters who opposed the government’s decision to back the invasion.
