U.N. Rejects Sunni Demand for New Vote in Iraq
By
SABRINA TAVERNISEPublished: December 28, 2005
BAGHDAD,
Iraq, Dec. 28 - A United Nations official today announced publicly for the first time that he believed the results of the Dec. 15 Iraqi parliamentary election appeared valid, and he said demands by some groups for a new vote were unjustified.
The announcement, made at a news conference in Baghdad, is bound to disappoint some Sunni Arab political parties, which had claimed that ballot-box stuffing and other fraud distorted the election results. Although it does not have the power to overturn results of the election, the United Nations figured prominently in organizing the vote, and its public show of support bolstered Iraqi authorities' claims that the vote was legitimate.
"The U.N. is of the view that these elections were transparent and credible," said the official, Craig Jenness, who led the agency's election coordination effort here. He added that although all complaints must be weighed thoroughly, "we at the U.N. see no justification in calls for a re-run of the elections."
Several Sunni parties, as well as some secular groups, have called for the authorities to hold a new vote, but that demand now looks unlikely to be met. Abdul Hussein al-Hindawi, an electoral commission board member, read a statement at the conference that said the commission planned on canceling some ballots in some areas, but that it had all but ruled out holding a new vote because it had not found evidence of widespread forgery.
"There are individual violations without wide, systematic forgery operations," Mr. Hindawi said.
Even as the Iraqi authorities appeared to be closing the door on complaints of fraud, Sunni Arab parties continued to press their demands. Demonstrations that have been organized to protest the results of the election over the past week continued today, with a large crowd filling an area near the government building in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and protesters gathering in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.
Dhafir al-Ani, the spokesman for the main Sunni alliance, the Iraqi Consensus Front, which has been vocal in its criticism of the results, said that his group rejected the conclusion put forth by Mr. Jenness, and that they would continue to ask for a new vote.
"Several international workers sitting inside the Green Zone are not able to evaluate the election matter," he said by telephone today. "We still believe that huge fraud happened in the Iraqi election and it completely changed the results."
Mr. Jenness said the United Nations team that assisted the election was made up of 50 international experts. The vote was also monitored by 120,000 observers, he said.
Mr. Hindawi said that the commission would cancel forged ballots in polling stations in Baghdad, the northern cities of Erbil, Kirkuk, and the provinces of Anbar in the west, Nineveh in the north and Diyala in central Iraq. In addition, two teams of investigators are reviewing results in the southern cities of Babel and Basra. The results of the ballot reviews are expected to be announced within the next few days, Mr. Hindawi said.
In Baghdad today, an inmate in a high-security prison in the Kadhimiya neighborhood grabbed an AK-47 from a guard during a routine morning outing, shot him dead, and began freeing other prisoners, including a citizen of Saudi Arabia, officials said.
Iraqi solders eventually quelled the revolt, which began at around 6 a.m., said Brig. Gen. Jaleel Khalaf, a commander who was among the forces. About 16 prisoners were involved in the revolt, according to a statement from the American military, which participated in bringing the incident under control, and all of them were accounted for.
The prison holds about 215 high-security inmates and is located within an Iraqi Army base. In all, nine people, including four prisoners, an interpreter and four prison guards, were killed. One American soldier and five prisoners were injured, the military said.
The military also reported the death of an American marine, who was killed by small-arms fire in Khalidiya in the volatile western province of Anbar on Dec. 26.
In Dhibai, a village about 40 miles north of Baghdad, gunmen killed two soldiers and wounded seven in an ambush on an Iraqi army patrol on Tuesday, according to Reuters. Insurgents first struck the patrol with a roadside bomb, and then fired on the soldiers.
The election developments came as Shiite and Kurdish leaders met in northern Iraq to discuss forming a government that would include representatives from all of Iraq's religious and ethnic groups. Abdul Aziz Hakim, the head of the Shiite coalition that is expected to capture the largest share of votes that were cast in the election, met with Masoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, and said that he had held "preliminary consultations" on the formation of a government but that talks were still in the very early stages. He indicated that the Sunnis were not yet involved.
"We need to evaluate the previous alliance and study its weaknesses and strengths," Mr. Hakim said at a news conference with Mr. Barzani, The Associated Press reported from the city of Erbil in the Kurdish enclave. "Then we will try to include the others."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Qais Mizher, Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Khalid al-Ansary.
