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Sunni participation boosts Iraqi election turnout

Atul Aneja

Sporadic violence in provincial towns, blasts rock Baghdad

DUBAI: With Iraq's minority Sunni community showing up in strength, there has been a high turnout in the country's parliamentary elections amid sporadic violence that has included a mortar attack in Baghdad's high profile Green Zone area.

Heeding a call by influential clerics inside and outside Iraq, Sunni voters headed for polling stations in large numbers. The Mayor of Fallujah, a resistance stronghold, said that the turnout in his area was about 45 per cent.

Political dimension

Top Sunni leaders have emphasised that by participating in elections, they were adding a political dimension to their on-going armed resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Reuters news agency quoted a Sunni voter in the trouble city of Ramadi as saying that he had cast his vote because he felt that "this election will lead to the American occupation forces leaving Ramadi and Iraq." On the eve of the election, a senior commander of the Army of Mohammed, who favoured Sunni participation in polling had said that the political and military resistance against occupation would continue simultaneously.

Once elected, Sunni lawmakers were expected seek a fixed timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and resist the move for Shia and Kurdish "autonomy" in the oil-bearing southern and northern Iraq. Election Commission officials said that over 14 million people had registered to vote for the 275-member National Assembly. The elected Assembly would pick a President and two Vice-Presidents.

The Presidential Council would then appoint a Prime Minister whose name would have to be approved by Parliament.

Irregularities allleged

Representatives of the Turkoman Front accused Kurdish voters of multiple voting and other poll irregularities. Analysts point out that the UIA, despite emerging as the single largest party, was unlikely to be in a position to form a government on its own.

During the day, several explosions shook Baghdad as the polls opened. Two civilians and a U.S. soldier were injured when a mortar shell exploded near the high security Green Zone. Violence was also reported from Tikrit, Mosul and Tal Afar in northern Iraq.

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