Late February urged for poll as Iraqis who fled get vote

THE UNITED Nations pressed Iraq’s election commission yesterday to designate February 27th as the date for parliamentary elections following the adoption late on Sunday of a new election law. The legislation, a compromise proposed by the UN mission, was approved five minutes ahead of a midnight deadline.

Vice-president Tareq al-Hashemi had threatened to veto the second draft, as he had the first, if it was not amended.

He said the original legislation deprived 2.5 million exiles of their right to participate.

Mr Hashemi, a Sunni, has been accused of trying to secure representation for his community.

However, tens of thousands of Iraqis of every sect and ethnicity have fled the country since the 2003 US occupation.

Under the adopted version of the law, the votes of exiles will be counted in their home provinces and given the same weight as those of Iraqis at home.

After the vote in the assembly, Mr Hashemi observed, “All of our demands have been achieved. The displaced people have been treated fairly; the value of people inside and outside Iraq is the same . . .

“I consider [this] a historic day in building the modern Iraq.”

Iraq’s parliament is to be expanded from 275 to 325 seats; 310 are to be allocated to the country’s 18 provinces and 15 to religious minorities and parties or blocs that win support on the na- tional level but do not secure seats in the provinces.

The vote had been set for January 16th, ahead of the constitutional deadline of the end of that month, but must be rescheduled to give the election commission 90 days to prepare for the poll.

The Kurds gained most from the protracted struggle over the law.

They secured 41 seats, three more than under the 2005 law. Some Kurdish candidates are likely to win seats in adjacent provinces and the Kurds could be allocated two of the “national” compensatory places.

They agreed to the deal only after US president Barack Obama and vice-president Joe Biden appealed to Kurdish region president Massoud Barzani to accept it.

They promised to press for a national census and tackle the dispute over Kirkuk, which Kurds want to annex to their region in spite of vehement Arab opposition.

Washington was forced to act when the delay in adopting a law threatened to derail the election process.

The Obama administration is determined to retain 120,000 combat troops in Iraq to provide security for the vote and to maintain a strong presence until after a new government is formed, which may take several weeks.

Any postponement of the poll beyond the end of February could mean putting off the pull-out of 70,000 US soldiers slated to withdraw from Iraq by August.

Some 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq to train local forces until the end of 2011.

The administration seeks to stick to the timetable because 30,000 forces have been pledged for Afghanistan.