UN official insists Iraqi elections credible

A UNITED NATIONS official said yesterday that Iraq’s recent parliamentary elections, which have given a strong lead to the Shi’ite religious bloc dominating the current government, were credible and that there was there was no justification in calls for a rerun.

In violence yesterday, an inmate in a Baghdad prison grabbed an assault rifle from a guard and opened fire, killing eight people, police said. One American soldier was injured in the attempted prison break.

The Shi’ite bloc held talks with Kurdish leaders about who should get the top 12 government jobs, as thousands of Sunni Arabs and secular Shi’ites protested what they say was a tainted vote. Two Sunni Arab groups and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s Iraqi National List have threatened a wave of protests and civil disobedience, if fraud charges are not properly investigated.

In continuing political demonstrations across the country, more than 4,000 people rallied in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, in favour of the major Sunni Arab party, the Iraqi Accordance Front. Protesters carried banners saying: “We refuse the election forgery.”

The United Nations official, Craig Jenness, said at a news conference organised by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq that the UN-led international election assistance team found the elections to be credible and transparent. “Turnout was high and the day was largely peaceful, all communities participated.”

Iraqi officials said they had found some instances of fraud that were enough to cancel the results in that place, but not to hold a rerun.

There were more than 1,500 complaints made about the elections, with about 50 of them considered serious enough possibly to lead to cancellation of results in some places.

Fraud had been discovered in the provinces of Baghdad, Irbil, Ninevah, Kirkuk, Anbar and Diyala.

Jenness said the number of complaints was less than one in every 7,000 voters. About 70% of Iraq’s 15 million voters took part in the elections.

In yesterday’s prison escape attempt, the prisoner fired indiscriminately after grabbing an AK-47, killing four guards and four inmates, said Iraqi army Brig. Gen Jalil al-Mehamadawi. The Interior Ministry said one guard and three prisoners were wounded.

The US military’s account was slightly different. A statement by Sgt Keith Robinson said “it was reported that 16 prisoners attempted to escape the facility after first storming the armory and obtaining an undetermined number of weapons”.

Robinson said, in addition to the eight deaths, that one US soldier and five prisoners were injured, but the US statement did not mention the assault rifle.

Meanwhile, police in Karbala said 31 bodies had been unearthed in a mass grave this week and believed to date back to a 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein. Officials hope to identify bodies through DNA testing.