BAGHDAD, 30 December 2005 — A team of international assessors will review Iraq’s Dec. 15 parliamentary elections following complaints by Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups that the polls were tainted by fraud, it was announced yesterday.
The assessors from the International Mission for Iraqi Elections, or IMIE, will include two executive representatives from the League of Arab States, one executive member of the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians and a respected European academic, the group said in a statement.
The team will travel to Iraq after an invitation from the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, which asked for the review after saying it had had nothing to hide.
The invitation to review the process and about 1,500 complaints lodged by candidates and parties was welcomed by the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, who said “these experts will be arriving immediately and we are ready to assist them, if needed.”
The IMIE said in an announcement that the “findings of the assessors will be transmitted to the IMIE Steering Committee for review and the Steering Committee will issue a statement soon thereafter.”
“It is important that the Iraqi people have confidence in the election results and that the voting process, including the process for vote counting, is free and fair,’ Khalilzad said.
Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups have been pressing for an independent international organization to review the elections for the 275-member parliament, claiming they were tainted by fraud. They have demanded a rerun of elections in some provinces — including Baghdad.
In its announcement, the IECI stressed that it “rejects the demand for the rerun of the elections.”
Final results are expected in early January, after the complaints have been reviewed and the elections certified.
The United Nations and the United States rebuffed calls by Sunnis and secular Shiites to re-run Iraq’s parliamentary elections as protests against the vote yesterday continued.
In a demonstration in the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, hundreds of Sunni Arabs and Turkmen protested election results that gave a dominant position to the Kurdish Alliance, which wants to include the city in the Kurdish autonomous region.
“We demand the re-run of elections,” said one of the banners at the demonstration, while others condemned alleged electoral fraud, indirectly accusing Shiites and Kurds.
The past two days have seen thousands demonstrate in Baghdad as well as in predominantly Sunni Arab cities such as Samarra and Tikrit, calling for a re-run of the election or the formation of a national unity government.
The Sunni Arabs’ chief ally in denouncing alleged electoral fraud has been the National Iraqi List of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite whose mixed coalition faired poorly in the elections.
“There were many violations, we have submitted these violations with the proof to the electoral commission,” he told CNN Wednesday. “We are waiting for the results.” Allawi is calling for a re-run of the elections in certain provinces.
While the electoral commission has stood by preliminary election results it published, it has acknowledged there were a number of irregularities and, in some cases, are planning to toss out results believed to be fraudulent.
“In the next few days we will cancel results in some polling stations that have seen vote rigging in some governorates,” commission member Abdel Hussein Al-Hendawi told reporters.
Meanwhile, fourteen Shiite men and women were gunned down Wednesday in an area south of Iraq’s capital known as the “triangle of death,” as a US soldier died in a bomb blast and a Lebanese was kidnapped in Baghdad.
In the latest outbreak of violence, 14 people, believed to be from a single Shiite family, were found shot to death in their home in Mamudiyah, south of the capital.
“Armed men broke into their home and their bodies were then taken by minibus to a police checkpoint in Latifiyah,” a security official said.
Another security source said the victims were “Shiites living in the midst of Sunnis”.
In the capital, a roadside bomb killed a US soldier, bringing the overall US military death toll in Iraq to 2,172.
The foreign ministry in Beirut announced that one of its nationals, an engineer named as Camille Nassif Tannus, was kidnapped in Baghdad, and French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy appealed for the release of a French hostage threatened with execution.
A previously unknown group claimed the kidnapping of French engineer Bernard Planche and threatened on Wednesday to kill him if France did not “end its illegitimate presence in Iraq,” in a video shown on Al-Arabiya television.
“I stress that France has no military presence in Iraq and that it has always argued for full sovereignty to be restored to the country,” Douste-Blazy said in a statement appealing for the release of Planche.
A German archaeologist, recently released after being held hostage for 24 days, said her kidnappers were linked to Al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
Susanne Osthoff, 43, told ZDF television of the psychological terror she experienced during her captivity, but Die Welt newspaper quoted her as saying she intended returning to Iraq despite warnings from Berlin.
In other unrest, attacks targeting the nation’s security forces continued yesterday when a suicide bomber blew himself up near the interior ministry in Baghdad, killing four policemen and wounding five.
