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["Melody O." <melody AT crecon.com>]

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/050112/1/3pt1s.html
Wednesday January 12, 7:42 PM    
Iraq leaders admit nationwide vote impossible, hunt ends for WMD

Iraqi leaders acknowledged that parts of the country remain too dangerous
to conduct the election, while the US military has reportedly ended a long
and fruitless hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

Against a backdrop of ongoing insurgent attacks, Iraqi foreign minister
Hoshyar Zebari told an Egyptian newspaper the election would go ahead as
planned on January 30 but conceded there would be problems in ensuring a
nationwide vote.

"The elections will not be perfect, nor organised 100 percent. There will
be problems but we will hold them because the majority of people want
them," Zebari said.

He told the government newspaper Al-Ahram that voting would be able to be
carried out in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces but that in the four troublesome
provinces efforts would be made to ensure participation.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi admitted Tuesday that some areas were
not secure enough for people to vote in what are being touted as the first
fully free and fair elections in half a century.

"There are some pockets that will not participate in the election but they
are not large," Allawi said on a bloody day that saw 26 people killed
despite the prime minister saying the authorities were winning the battle
against insurgents.

Allawi also announced Tuesday that the government has set aside 2.2 billion
dollars in the budget to strengthen the security forces, with the aim of
boosting numbers to 150,000.

The resistance movement has been fanned in part by widespread concern among
the Sunni Arab elite, which dominated Saddam Hussein's regime and all
previous Iraqi governments, that the new parliament will be dominated by
the long-oppressed Shiite majority.

The second in command of US forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Thomas Metz,
also conceded last week the situation remained volatile around the Sunni
Muslim populated areas of al-Anbar, Nineveh, Salahuddin and Diyala provinces.

A US soldier was among those killed in al-Anbar on Tuesday, raising to
1,352 soldiers the number of soldiers killed in action since the US
invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Meanwhile, the Washingon Post reported that the search for weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq ended before Christmas and that an interim report by
top US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer saying there are no weapons to be
found will likely stand.

"The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture," a senior
intelligence official told the paper.

Duelfer's report to Congress, which officials say he is finishing and will
be published by the end of June, said Saddam had the intent but not the
capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.

The report contradicted one of US President George W. Bush's chief reasons
for the war that led to the toppling of Saddam in April 2003.

As the clock ticked down to polling day on January 30, fears of internal
Iraqi political strife mounted, as a top Shiite party vowed to cleanse the
security forces of ex-Baathists and Allawi's Iraqi National Accord party
cried foul over the alleged use of religion by Shiite political candidates.

Allawi's party lodged a formal complaint against the joint Shiite list, the
Unified Iraqi Alliance, for violating state law by allegedly using religion
in its advertising. It also accused Shiite militias of intimidating voters
ahead of the poll.

Hadi al-Amri, the head of the erstwhile military wing of Supreme Council of
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) which heads the Shiite alliance,
charged that Iraq's security forces had been penetrated by allies of the
old Baath party regime.

In the latest violence, the city of Baquba's municipal services chief was
assassinated Wednesday, witnesses and medical sources said. The US military
said at least six members of Baquba's regional council have been
assassinated since April.

A secular Shiite politician Mithal al-Alussi said Wednesday there was a
grenade and small arms attack on his home late Tuesday, but he escaped
unscathed.

A car bomb also exploded near a US military convoy in the northern city of
Mosul Wednesday, possibly wounding four people, the US military said.

The attacks happened after 26 people were killed Tuesday, the vast majority
of them members of Iraqi security forces, including six police who died in
a car bombing of a police station in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.

Militants loyal to Iraq's most wanted man, Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, said they carried out the bombing, in an Internet statement.

In testimony heard at a US court martial of Specialist Charles Graner, two
detainees from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison described how US soldiers
beat and sexually humiliated them, and in one case insulted the Muslim faith.