Intelligence

Powell predicts Shiite victory in Iraqi elections

Yahoo! News - Powell predicts Shiite victory in Iraqi elections

Sun Jan 2, 8:43 PM ET
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) has predicted a Shiite victory in upcoming Iraqi elections, but moved to assuage concerns it could bolster Iranian influence inside the country.

The statement came amid growing indications that Sunni Arabs will either boycott the January 30 polls or will be prevented from taking part in it due to a spreading insurgency, which Powell said was not likely to stop any time soon.

"The new government that comes into place in Baghdad, the transitional national assembly, will be majority Shiite," the secretary of state said on NBC's "Meet the Press" show. "That's the majority of the population."

Shiite Muslims make up more than 60 percent of Iraq (news - web sites)'s population, concentrated mostly in southern and central parts of the country. Sunni Arabs, who live in central and western provinces, comprise about 20 percent of all Iraqis.

Former Iraqi foreign minister Adnan Pachachi, who now heads the Sunni-dominated Iraqi Independent Democrats Party, called Sunday for delaying the vote, saying elections under current circumstances "will leave a large segment of the population disenfranchised and many regions underrepresented."

But in a round of television interviews Powell made clear the vote for the Iraqi National Assembly will go forward as scheduled, and insisted that a legislature dominated by Iraqi Shiites should not be cause for concern.

Powell said he was confident the transitional administrative law, under which elections are being held, will protect the rights of the Kurdish and Sunni Arab minorities as well as other residents of Iraq.

As a result, he said Iraq was likely to end up with a government "that may be majority Shia but respects the rights of others."

Powell also said he felt it was unlikely Shiite control of Iraq's future government would mean it would be run from Tehran.

"My sensing right now is that, even though there may be Iranian influence -- and Iranians will try to influence this, of course -- there is sufficient difference and past serious disagreements and conflicts between Iranian and Iraqi Shias," he said.

Given that, the Iraqi Shiites "will stand on their own two feet," he concluded.

Powell did not spell out reasons for his confidence, but US and other Western diplomats have been in contact with aides to the most prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and other Shiite officials to discuss the elections and future political arrangements, officials said.

Although seen as a moderate influence in Iraqi politics, Sistani was born in Iran and studied theology in the central Iranian city of Qom, the cradle of Islamic fundamentalism.

Shiite political leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, whose Unified Iraqi Alliance is expected to do well in the upcoming polls, assured visiting US senators last month that Iran will not be allowed to meddle in Iraqi affairs.

But he is closely tied to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an opposition group formed in Iran in 1982 and backed by it for many years.

US Senator Joseph Lieberman, who talked with Hakim in Baghdad, said he expected victorious Shiites to form a unity government that will include not only Kurds, but also leaders of the Sunni community.

However, Pachachi said delaying the election "for a few months" could help avoid a situation, in which the legitimacy of the vote would be questioned.

"Nothing remotely like electioneering takes place in Iraq, even in relatively peaceful areas in the south and north," the veteran politician wrote in The Washington Post. "For candidates to announce mass rallies would be to issue an open invitation for terrorists to attack.

January 3, 2005 at 12:26 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home