Despite violence, Iraq poll can be credible - U.N.

Despite violence, Iraq poll can be credible - U.N.
22 Jan 2005 12:42:13 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Luke Baker

BAGHDAD, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Conditions for Iraq's election are far from ideal and violence is expected on the day, but the vote will go ahead on Jan. 30 and should be credible, the U.N.'s top election official in Iraq said on Saturday.

With eight days to go before the country's first multi-party election in nearly half a century, Carlos Valenzuela said he and Iraq's Electoral Commission were in a race against time but remained on target to have everything in place on polling day.

"We've got to the stage where we can say that all electoral preparations are, at least at this point, in place, although there is still a lot of work to be done," Valenzuela, 47, told reporters inside the heavily fortified Green Zone compound.

"(Conditions) are not the best and certainly far from ideal, but if the security measures work there is a very good chance that the elections that take place will take place successfully ...and will be accepted as legitimate," he said.

Insurgents have stepped up their 18-month campaign of violence in the build-up to the poll, killing 25 Shi'ites in two suicide bombings in and near Baghdad on Friday in an apparent attempt to drive a wedge between religious communities.

Valenzuela, who has spent the past 13 years planning and overseeing elections in hotspots ranging from Haiti and East Timor to Mozambique and Mali, said he expected militants to try to disrupt the poll but hoped counter-measures would work.

"There has been violence in the run-up and it is likely that there will at least be attempts at violence on the day," he said, emphasising that conditions were far from perfect. "But violence does not necessarily disqualify the elections."

TOO MUCH VIOLENCE?

A little over 14 million Iraqis could potentially turn up to vote at some 5,700 stations, prompting very real fears that militants will target crowds of people waiting to vote.

To try to counteract that threat, the location of voting centres will be revealed only at the last minute in some areas, and intense security measures will be in place countrywide. U.S. forces are hoping to keep a distance, putting Iraqi troops in charge, but they will move in if violence gets out of hand.

Some Sunni Arab politicians have called for a boycott arguing that the violence and intimidation gripping the country is too great, making it impossible for their supporters to go and vote and rendering the poll neither free nor fair.

It is unclear how much violence might be too much violence on the day -- enough to prompt electoral officials to declare the vote invalid or call it off. Valenzuela did not dismiss such a scenario but said the Electoral Commission would decide.

"It's something they will be monitoring very closely," said the Colombian diplomat, who believes conditions in Iraq are still not as bad as they were for East Timor's election in 1999.

"Should there be -- which is something that we hope will not happen -- but should there be massive violence that forces a significant number of polling centres to be closed down, then the commission might decide to do something regarding the election at that time," he said.

If the vote does come off, the results are unlikely to be known for several days, possibly as long as a week, Valenzuela said. And even then, no one expects the violence to disappear. U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld told reporters last month it would be a mistake to think violence would end and conditions in Iraq improve after the election.