Security crackdown as Iraq prepares to vote

THE Iraqi Government announced yesterday it will close all borders, extend curfew hours and ban travel across provincial borders as part of stringent security measures to protect voters during this week’s parliamentary elections.

Elsewhere, concern mounted over the fate of four peace activists as a deadline set by kidnappers threatening to kill them passed on Saturday. Iraq’s interior ministry said it had no information about the hostages and emissaries from Canada and Britain showed no signs of having established contact with the kidnappers.

The previously unknown Swords of Righteousness Brigade seized the activists two weeks ago. The four are Norman Kember, 74, of London; Tom Fox, 54, of Virginia; and Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32.

A French aid worker and a German citizen also are being held by kidnappers. There also has been no further word on the fate of American hostage Ronald Allen Schulz, after an internet statement in the name of the Islamic Army in Iraq on Thursday claimed his abductors had killed him.

“They are all people who came to serve us, to serve our people. This is a humanitarian matter and they were subjected to the ugliest type of blackmail,” Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said yesterday.

In Najaf, the country’s leading Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, urged followers to turn out in large numbers for the Thursday balloting, in which voters will choose a 275-member parliament to serve a full four-year term.

But Mr al-Sistani stopped short of openly endorsing the coalition of religious Shi’ite parties which swept the largest number of seats in the January election.

The Interior Ministry said the emergency measures will take effect early tomorrow and last until Saturday morning. The nighttime curfew will be extended by three hours, all international borders and airports will be closed and travel across provincial boundaries will be banned.

Additional forces have been sent to Ramadi and other insurgent trouble spots to bolster security.

The election will be the first under the new constitution ratified in a referendum on October 15 and will complete the steps toward democratisation in Iraq following the ousting of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 2003 US-led invasion.

US officials hope that establishment of a broad-based constitutional government will help calm the Sunni Arab-led insurgency and allow the US and its coalition partners to begin drawing down troops next year.

The Americans are hoping for a strong turnout among Sunni Arabs, the community at the foundation of the insurgency. Many Sunnis boycotted the January election, sharpening communal tensions and fuelling the insurgency.

However, US commanders have also warned that the insurgency remains a threat to the new Iraqi Government and that the reduction of coalition forces can take place only when Iraq’s army and police are ready.

The US command announced yesterday that a US soldier was killed by a roadside bombing in Baghdad. The soldier was the seventh US trooper to be killed in the Baghdad area since Thursday.

In Sulaimaniyah, President Jalal Talabani predicted that no party will win a clear-cut victory this Thursday, forcing the formation of a coalition government such as the one currently in power.

A coalition of Shi’ite religious parties is expected to win the biggest bloc of seats again but probably fall short of the number they hold in the current parliament. Most Sunni Arabs boycotted the January election, but this time a number of Sunnis are in the race and are expected to win a strong majority.

The election commission yesterday said it was investigating a fivefold increase in the number of new voters in Kirkuk, an oil-rich northern city that the Kurds wish to incorporate into their self-ruled region.