Walking a Tightrope -- Quickly -- Toward Iraqi Elections

Iraqi and United Nations officials have little room for error as they confront the challenge of pulling together credible parliamentary elections in a violence-ravaged nation with no history of democracy.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who has been on a U.S. tour, pledged Friday that elections would be held as scheduled in January. And speaking a day after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested that some trouble spots might be excluded from the vote, he rejected the idea of partial balloting.

“There will be no partial elections,” Allawi told reporters at the United Nations. “Every eligible Iraqi will be able to vote.”

State Department officials also tried to head off the idea that anyone would be marginalized. “We’re going to have an election ... that has to be open to all citizens,” Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told a House committee. “We absolutely want to hold [elections] in all parts of Iraq.”

Electoral officials want to reach out to all groups, especially minority Sunni Muslims. Sunnis already feel aggrieved because they lost their dominant status with the ouster of President Saddam Hussein, a fellow Sunni.

Rumsfeld’s comments Thursday revived the question of whether hot spots such as the predominantly Sunni city of Fallouja would be left out. The city, which sits in Iraq’s Sunni heartland west of Baghdad, is an insurgent stronghold that remains largely out of direct government control.

But officials must also take into account the desire of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority to hold elections as soon as possible. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the nation’s preeminent Shiite cleric, has been adamant in demanding elections quickly, which would probably result in the full political empowerment of Iraq’s long-repressed majority.

The election preparations are on “a very tight timeline,” said Carlos Valenzuela, the top U.N. electoral official here. Violence preceding election day, now projected to be Jan. 31, “could be a showstopper,” he said.

The prospect of violence has already begun to hinder election plans.

One of seven voting members of the U.N.-appointed independent electoral commission has resigned because of threats. Many others, ranging from top electoral officials to staffers at local polling places, might face intimidation or assassination attempts.

Officials with experience in holding elections say it will be difficult to organize the Iraqi vote. “This makes the Balkans look like Norway,” one said. However, they still have hope, citing the example of elections in places such as East Timor, Cambodia and Algeria.

Valenzuela said that because of violence, the province he was responsible for in the 1993 Cambodian election had to reduce the number of polling places by 60% the day before the vote.

“And people still came to vote, and the results were accepted,” he said.

Any suggestion of excluding certain groups or areas in Iraq could be harmful, Valenzuela said.

“It certainly doesn’t help to have people making statements like ‘We can have elections without Fallouja,’ ” said Valenzuela, who spoke before Rumsfeld made his comments. A senior U.S. commander in Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, suggested in an interview this month that trouble spots such as Fallouja could be excluded.

There is little electoral buzz so far in Iraq, where security is the major preoccupation. U.S. and Iraqi forces have launched offensives around the country in recent weeks, seeking to establish control over rebellious areas.

But even without violence, the scope of the undertaking and the tight deadline leave almost no margin for error. Officials expect more than 20,000 polling places to accommodate as many as 14 million eligible voters.

“We really can’t have any bad luck, and we need a little good luck along the way,” said an electoral expert with experience in Iraq and other post-conflict situations. “Even the absence of bad luck is probably not sufficient.”

Three elections are scheduled to be held simultaneously in January, making the job even more complicated.

Along with balloting for a 275-member national assembly, which is to write a constitution, Iraqis in each of the nation’s 18 provinces are scheduled to vote for regional councils. In addition, the three Kurdish provinces in the north are to elect a Kurdish parliament.

U.N. election planners in Iraq, who number fewer than 10, hadn’t anticipated that three elections would be held. The elections are spelled out in Iraq’s interim constitution, which was crafted during the U.S.-led occupation.

“We almost fainted when we read that,” Valenzuela said. “We were talking about one election, not three elections.”

The U.S. government is quietly pumping $100 million into voter education efforts and other projects designed to move the process along, complementing an investment of $250 million by the Iraqis. All sides are trying to keep the relationship formally distant to avoid accusations of tampering.

None of the U.S. funding is going directly to the electoral commission. Instead, the U.S. Embassy is working through nongovernmental organizations, which are working with the commission.

A $16-million U.S. grant is funding the work of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, a Washington-based group working directly with the commission. Grants to groups such as the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute -- groups with links to the two major U.S. parties -- are to fund more general programs such as voter education and party development.

U.S. troops will play a major role in maintaining security on election day. But that support will also be kept low-key to avoid accusations of stage-managing.

“In some of the hot areas, we’ll depend on coalition forces, but not very near the polling places,” said Adil Alwan, a member of the electoral commission. Even Iraqi police will not be allowed inside the polling stations, Alwan said.

U.S. commanders, many of whom helped provide security for elections in the Balkans, say they know they need to stay clear of the polling places if possible. Ideally, they say, their role will be to provide backup to Iraqi forces.

“We’re ready to help out,” said Col. Dana Pittard of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division in Baqubah, northeast of the capital. “That’s not to say things will come off without a hitch. Someone may well try to disrupt things. But we will be there to help the Iraqi government as called upon.”

Voter registration, using food-ration cards issued during the Hussein era, is to begin in November, along with candidate registration. Voters will cast ballots for parties rather than individuals. The percentage of votes received by each party will determine how many of its candidates join the new parliament.

Individuals can also run as “political entities” if they can gather 5,000 signatures. Guidelines laid down in the interim constitution mandate that every third name on each candidate list must be that of a woman. A five-week formal campaign period is tentatively scheduled to begin Dec. 16.

Even if the elections are held on time and include the entire country, they are unlikely to result in a true opening of the Iraqi political system, experts say. The six top political parties -- exile groups that dominated the now disbanded Governing Council -- may be in a position to capture the lion’s share of seats.

A national conference in August to elect a 100-member de facto parliament ended in acrimony as the top parties -- including Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord -- agreed on a single candidate slate. A second group of independent candidates withdrew in protest.

“The process will have flaws,” acknowledged a Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We’ll be happy if elections are held, and that they’re free .... That would be such an accomplishment.”

Times staff writers Mark Mazzetti in Washington and Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.