Iraqi PM calls pre-vote candidate ban legitimate

By REBECCA SANTANA and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writers

BAGHDAD – Iraq's prime minister Sunday defended a ban of candidates with alleged ties to Saddam Hussein's former regime, calling it a legitimate decision that would not affect Sunni turnout at the polls.

In an interview with The Associated Press just a week before March 7 elections, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also said he did not see any need at this point for U.S. forces to stay in the country past their planned 2011 departure date.

Al-Maliki, who came to power in 2006 as a compromise candidate, has overseen a return to relative stability since the height of the insurgency, but is facing stiff competition in his bid for another four-year term.

The decision to bar hundreds of candidates from the election, including two prominent Sunni lawmakers, for alleged ties to Saddam's ruling party has dominated Iraq's political debate for weeks and reflects the deep sectarian differences that still divide the country.

"This will never affect the turnout of the Sunnis in the elections. The decision was taken because some of these people were blatantly propagating Baath party ideas, and there is information that some of them are involved in actions that serve the Baath party," al-Maliki said.

Many in the country's Sunni minority, which dominated the Baath Party leadership, were outraged by the decision, which they felt unjustly targeted Sunni political figures in an attempt to politically sideline them. A sectarian breakdown of the list, which includes Shiites as well, has never been released.

The murky process — about which little information was disclosed — raised questions about whether Sunnis would feel disillusioned by the vote and stay away from the polls. At one point, a prominent Sunni politician on the list even pulled his party from the race, and urged others Sunni parties to withdraw as well, raising fears of a Sunni boycott. That decision has since been rescinded.

In discussing the ban, al-Maliki appeared to distance himself from the two men who initiated the process — Shiite politicians Ali al-Lami and Ahmed Chalabi. Both are running in the election, raising questions about why they were being allowed to sideline their competition.

As the heads of the Accountability and Justice Committee that vetted candidates for ties to the former regime, al-Lami and Chalabi shocked the Iraqi political system when they announced a blacklist containing hundreds of names.

But al-Maliki emphasized that the legal justification for the eventual ban came not from the pair's initial decision but from a later committee, set up with parliamentary backing, to investigate their findings. The question of whether the Accountability and Justice Committee had a legal basis to take action has been a key source of contention in this debate.

How to deal with the former members of the Baathist regime has been a long-running political dispute in Iraq. In 2003, the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded the Iraqi army and purged the government of tens of thousands of former Baath Party members — steps that were widely considered to have helped foster the insurgency.

In 2008, thousands of former party cadres were allowed to resume government jobs as part of a national reconciliation process, but last fall tensions escalated again when al-Maliki accused Baathists of being behind a series of bloody bombings targeting government buildings in Baghdad.

The Shiite prime minister gained popularity as a leader who was able to bring relative security and stability to this nation shattered by years of vicious sectarian fighting, in partnership with U.S. forces. The winner of next Sunday's vote will preside over a drawdown of U.S. forces that will see all combat troops leave Iraq by the end of August and all American forces go home by 2011.

When asked whether he might request some U.S. forces remain beyond 2011, al-Maliki said he would not be afraid to ask for troops if needed but that he thought it would not be necessary.

"Let us not forget that Iraq is sticking to the strategic security agreement between Iraq and the United States and Iraq considers it as a partnership guarantee in several levels. If Iraq is subjected to any security threat, it can ask for help," al-Maliki said. "But my estimation as a prime minister and my knowledge about the building of the Iraqi security forces and the help presented by the United States to build the Iraqi army and police indicate that we will not need this."

The prime minister said security cooperation in the future between the U.S. and Iraq might not require American forces on the ground, but rather an agreement that could be activated if Iraq were in danger.

The prime minister also charged that there was a great deal of foreign interference in the election — but gave no indication as to who he was referring to. Candidates across the political spectrum have alleged interference from neighboring countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.

No one political party or alliance is expected to win an outright majority in the upcoming election so a period of extensive political maneuvering is likely to follow. Al-Maliki said if he were to win the most votes and be tasked with creating a new government, he would focus on partners who were committed to "national unity."

"Those who adopt a sectarian approach or those who violate the security of the country, I will not approach those people because they are against the principle of building a democratic state," he said.