Iran-Linked Cleric Leads Iraqi Candidates
54 minutes ago
Middle East - AP
By NICK WADHAMS, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A cleric with links to Iran leads the candidate list of a powerful coalition of Iraq (news - web sites)'s mainstream Shiite Muslim groups for next month's election, an aide said Friday. The list also includes former Pentagon (news - web sites) favorite Ahmad Chalabi and some followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim — the head of Iraq's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution — would stand to take a central position in the assembly that will create Iraq's next government and constition, if the coalition takes most of the parliament seats in the Jan. 30 vote.
Backed by Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the coalition — called the United Iraqi Alliance — hopes to draw the bulk of the vote from Iraq's Shiite majority. Iraq's U.S.-backed prime Minster, Ayad Allawi, also a Shiite, has not joined the grouping and is drawing up his own candidate list.
The coalition's platform, which has not been finished, will include a call for working toward the withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign troops in Iraq, members said.
"There must be a timetable for this," said Hussein al-Mousawi, an official of the Shiite Political Council, an umbrella group that has some parties represented in the alliance.
For now, troops are arriving here in greater numbers, part of a U.S. plan to bolster security ahead of elections. In the southern city of Basra, Iraqi security officials reported that fresh American soldiers ordered to Iraq had crossed the border with Kuwait on Friday.
A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad declined to comment on the reported troop movement, citing security concerns. Currently there are about 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Washington announced the 12,000-troop increase last week. It will bring the U.S. military force to the highest level of the war, including the initial invasion in March 2003.
The military on Friday said a U.S. Marine was killed in action a day earlier in the volatile Anbar province west of Baghdad, a region including Ramadi and Fallujah. Insurgents targeted Iraqi National Guard patrols in separate roadside bomb attacks Friday in Tikrit and Baqouba, wounding nine Iraqi soldiers, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien said. Four civilians were also wounded.
The Shiite coalition's list of 228 candidates was created under the guidance of al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric. He has been working to unite Shiites to ensure victory and include representatives from Iraq's other diverse communities. Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq's nearly 26 million people.
The list's completion puts the focus squarely on Iraq's Sunni Arab groups, who must decide whether to continue seeking a postponement of the vote, boycott it, or join the race.
Many have warned that Iraq's persistent violence could make a vote impossible — and if Sunnis boycott the balloting, it could undermine the results' credibility.
The coalition list includes some independent Sunni Muslims, members of the Yazidi minority religious sect and a Turkomen movement, among others — but it is dominated by Shiites — particularly the established Shiite parties.
The election will be Iraq's first popular vote in decades. Iraqis will choose a 275-member assembly that will write a permanent constitution and pick a new government.
Individual candidates may run but voting will chiefly be done by party list. The number of seats coalitions win will be determined by the percentage of the vote they get — meaning that the higher on the list candidates are, the likelier they will get a seat in the new assembly.
"The different parties and the national figures asked (al-Sistani's) religious authority to help it to ... form an alliance that represents the Iraqi groups with its various religious, ethnic and geographic components," said nuclear physicist Hussain al-Shahristani, one of the six people on a commission named by al-Sistani to draw up the list.
The black-turbaned al-Hakim is the top candidate, said his secretary Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer.
Al-Hakim was the longtime head of SCIRI's armed wing, the Badr Brigade, which was based in Iran during the rule of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). Al-Hakim returned to Iraq after Saddam's fall and took up the leadership of SCIRI after his brother, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, was killed in a car bombing last year.
Other names in the top 10 of the list are Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and interim Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari of the Islamic Dawa Party, said al-Sagheer.
Chalabi, a leader of the opposition in exile, was touted as a possible new leader for Iraq by some in the Pentagon, but he fell out of favor with the United States earlier this year. Since then, he has been trying to build grassroots support among Shiites.
An adviser involved in the coalition talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some followers of al-Sadr were included on the list, suggesting there was at least some support from the radical cleric, whose followers have risen up against U.S. troops in southern Iraq twice this year, each time sparking bloody fighting.
Al-Sadr had kept his distance, apparently waiting to see whether the vote will be considered legitimate before he joins the political process.
The assembly created in the elections will pick a new president and two vice presidents, who will then select a prime minister. Its main task is to draw up a constitution, which — if adopted in a referendum next year — would form the legal basis for another general election to be held by Dec. 15, 2005.
On Friday, Iraq's electoral commission put off the deadline for candidate registration until Dec. 15, giving them more time. The deadline had been set to expire Friday.
One Sunni Arab group that had called for a delay, the Iraqi Islamic Party, quietly submitted a 275-candidate list Thursday. Party officials told The Associated Press they wanted to reserve the right to take part in the vote if the election is not postponed.
Masked gunmen riding in a black BMW killed three members of Iraq's Hezbollah Shiite movement, which is one of the 23 groups in the United Iraqi Alliance, according Essa Sayid Jaafer, director of the group's political office.
The shootings happened late Thursday in northern Baghdad and seriously wounded another member of the Hezbollah group, which Jaafer said has denounced both foreign terrorists who enter Iraq to launch attacks and detained members of Saddam Hussein's toppled regime.
It was unclear if the killings were related to the announcement of the new coalition.
In Mosul, the bodies of two slain police were found on Thursday, Capt. Ahmed Khalil said. Mosul has seen a spate of violence targeting the police, and dozens of bodies have turned up in recent weeks. |
