Iraqi election commission acknowledges fraud

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD – Iraqi officials acknowledged Sunday that there was some fraud in last month's provincial elections but not enough to force a new vote in any province.

Faraj al-Haidari, chairman of the election commission, said final results of the Jan. 31 voting would be certified and announced this week. Voters chose members of ruling provincial councils in an election seen as a dress rehearsal for parliamentary balloting by the end of the year.

The U.S. hailed the absence of major violence during the elections, expressing hope they would help cement security gains of the past year.

Despite the drop in violence, a U.S. soldier was killed Sunday by a roadside bomb in southern Iraq, the U.S. announced. At least three other people were killed by attacks Sunday in other parts of the country, according to police.

Preliminary election results from last month's balloting were announced Feb. 5 and showed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ticket swept to victory over Shiite religious parties in Baghdad and southern Iraq — a strong endorsement of his security efforts.

Al-Haidari told The Associated Press that ballots in more than 30 polling stations nationwide were nullified because of fraud but that was not enough to declare the election a failure.

He gave no further details. But one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to talk about the vote to media, said the most widespread fraud appeared to have occurred in Diyala province, which has large Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities and an ongoing insurgency.

A coalition including the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni political group, led in Diyala with 21.1 percent of the vote followed by a Kurdish alliance with 17.2 percent, according to preliminary results.

Al-Maliki's coalition finished fourth in Diyala with 9.5 percent.

U.S. officials have been closely watching the Diyala results for signs of friction between Arabs and Kurds, who are the biggest community in the far north of the province.

The Kurds were hoping that a strong Kurdish showing in those areas would bolster their case for incorporating parts of the province into the Kurdish self-ruled region.

In the south, al-Maliki's Dawa party and its coalition allies prevailed over their main Shiite rival, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which has close links to Iran.

That victory was partly driven by public backlash against what many Iraqis see as undue Iranian influence in their country.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf on Sunday announced a ban against non-Arabic signs in the country's holy cities, saying the measure was intended to counter ones appearing in Farsi, the language spoken in Iran.

"Due to our constitution, the formal language in Iraq is Arabic as well as Kurdish," Khalaf said in the Shiite holy city of Karbala. "Therefore, the use of another language defames the faces of the holy cities."

Signs at stores in Shiite holy cities are sometimes written in Farsi as well as Arabic to attract business from the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who visit each year from Iran, which like Iraq is a predominantly Shiite country.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims converged on Karbala in recent days to celebrate the end of 40 days of mourning that follow the anniversary of the seventh-century death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein, one of Shiite Islam's most revered saints.

A series of bombings targeting pilgrims on their way to Karbala killed 60 people and wounded 170 last week. Sunni militants have kept up their attacks against Shiites, hoping to re-ignite the kind of sectarian conflict that engulfed the country two years ago.

Police arrested a would-be suicide bomber south of Baghdad on Sunday who had explosives under his clothes and said he was planning to target pilgrims headed to Karbala, said a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The Karbala ceremonies culminate before dawn Monday.

Also Sunday, a bomb hidden in a garbage pile killed one person and injured 18 others in Baghdad's Sadr City district.

In the northern city of Mosul, one civilian and one police officer were killed in two separate attacks on police patrols, an Iraqi police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.

The Shiite-led government has continued its crackdown against Sunni militants. Iraqi police on Sunday announced the arrests of two senior al-Qaida in Iraq members.

Also Sunday, an Iraqi police official said authorities found 10 decomposing bodies in a mass grave near Taji, a former Sunni insurgent stronghold north of Baghdad. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.