By Richard A. Oppel, Jr.
New York Times, 25 December 2005
Baghdad -- An Iraqi court has ordered at least 90 candidates in the recent national elections disqualified from serving in the new Iraqi parliament because of their ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.
The head of Iraq's electoral commission, Adel al-Lami, said at a news conference here Saturday afternoon that the commission would abide by the court's ruling.
While it was not clear whether more than a handful of the affected candidates would have won seats in the 275-member parliament, the ruling bars some Sunni Arab leaders who probably would have won. It also is sure to stoke already deep resentment among Sunni Arabs, who are likely to have a limited role in the new government despite a large turnout at the ballot box nine days ago.
Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and ethnic Kurds voted overwhelmingly Dec. 15 for lists of parliamentary candidates that represented their own groups. According to preliminary, unofficial ballot counts, the largest share of votes was won by the alliance of Shiite Muslim religious parties that leads Iraq's outgoing government.
That voting pattern, and the subsequent unrest and charges of fraud from minority Sunnis, who won fewer votes than they said they expected, have exacerbated distrust among Iraqis that has emerged since the fall of Hussein almost three years ago, Iraqi officials and Western diplomats said.
In recent weeks, Shiite and Sunni leaders have called for the formation of sectarian armies to police their respective regions -- a step some observers say could be a precursor to open clashes between the groups.
The Kurds, who dominate most of oil-rich northern Iraq, already have their own fighting force, as do several Shiite parties.
Most of the candidates affected by the anti-Baath ruling are Sunni Arabs, though some are secular Shiites and others opposed to the more conservative Shiite alliance. Several are leaders of the slate led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Sunni Arab leaders have accused the dominant Shiite political parties of widespread ballot-box stuffing and other fraud, and have called for new elections. Several thousand Sunni Arabs demonstrated Friday in Baghdad.
On Saturday, Iraqi elections officials in Baghdad began examining ballot boxes from six polling sites in the capital that were subjects of fraud allegations.
Election officials also disclosed that some staff members from Iraq's Independent Election Commission were among those accused in the complaints of vote tampering. In addition to ballot-stuffing, the complaints include intimidation of voters to cast ballots for a specific list of candidates and refusing to record and forward to election officials in Baghdad witness accounts of fraud.
"There is great tension among Arab Sunnis," said Mahmoud al-Douri, an election adviser for one of the main Sunni political parties. "They feel like they voted in great numbers, but this isn't reflected in the results," he said.
Violence continued across the country Saturday. Gunmen killed eight people around Baghdad, and a U.S. soldier died from wounds sustained in a rocket-propelled grenade attack.
The soldier was assigned to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and was wounded in an attack while on patrol near the northern town of Hawija, the military said. Hawija Police Lt. Ali Abdullah said U.S. forces had responded to the attack by closing the town's main street and arresting three police nearby.
Elsewhere, three police officers were killed in Baquba by a booby-trapped motorcycle, and three civilians were killed during a mortar attack in Samarra.
About three-fifths of Iraq's population is Shiite, and early election results show that the main Shiite alliance will be the dominant force in the parliament. Moving to protect their showing on election day, Shiite leaders fired back Saturday at the Sunni allegations of voting fraud, calling the claims baseless and rejecting calls for new elections.
The leading Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, called on Iraqis to move ahead with efforts to form a "national unity" government.
But senior officials in the alliance deepened the post-election turmoil by claiming that Islamic extremists and Hussein loyalists were at the forefront of those questioning the results. They also ruled out having anyone other than a Shiite member of their religious bloc become Iraq's new prime minister.
"The door is open for dialogue with our brothers and partners because we believe that Iraq cannot stand up without its main components," Jawad al-Maliki, a senior Alliance official, said at a news conference.
In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Iraq's security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, emerged from a meeting with the nation's most revered Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and said the ayatollah had rebuffed calls for a new election. Rubaie quoted him as saying that "it is not possible to do it again and even to think about it."
Rubaie also said he believed the American-led alliance in Iraq would withdraw 50,000 troops over the next 12 months. The remaining military forces are likely to be withdrawn by the end of 2007, he added.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who ended his trip to Iraq by serving Christmas Eve dinner to troops in Mosul, announced Friday a slight reduction of U.S. forces that is likely to result in two fewer Army battalions in Iraq by next spring.
Rubaie also vowed to rearrest former senior members of Hussein's government who have been released in the past week by U.S. forces. "Iraqi justice will pursue them because they committed crimes against Iraqis," said Rubaie. The detainees include four people who played a leading role in efforts to develop biological weapons for Hussein's government.
Rubaie's statement drew a response from the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Gen. George Casey, the senior U.S. commander, who said in a joint statement that the 22 detainees "no longer posed a security threat" and that the military "therefore had no legal basis to hold them any longer."
From his presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., President Bush called nine U.S. troops to recognize their service to the nation and wish them holiday cheer.
"The president wished them a Merry Christmas and thanked them for their service to our country," said White House spokesman Allen Abney. "He just wanted to tell them that he was thinking of them and their families at this holiday season and that the American people were behind them and supported their efforts overseas."
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Citation: Richard A. Oppel, Jr. "Iraqi court disqualifies 90 candidates; Baath Party ties cited in ruling likely to further anger Sunnis," New York Times, 25 December 2005.
Original URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/25/MNGMDGD86C1.DTL
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