Chaos in Iraq makes elections impossible, says Jordan's king

The Jordanian monarch has said that elections in Iraq are impossible because of the current chaos and that “in the immediate” future he sees no chances of improvement.

King Abdullah II, who was paying a brief visit to France, told the daily Le Figaro that, in his view, extremists would gain the upper hand if elections were held under the current conditions in Iraq.

“It seems impossible to organise indisputable elections in the chaos of Iraq today,” he was quoted as saying. “The situation is very, very difficult and in the immediate I don’t see any chance of improvement.”

Abdullah said that extremists were currently the best organised faction in divided Iraq and if elections were held in the current disorder, “the results will reflect this advantage of the extremists”.

Abdullah noted that Jordan supports Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who wants the elections to take place as scheduled in January. However, the king was clear about his misgivings.

Re-establishing security is the biggest challenge facing Allawi, Abdullah said, adding that Jordan’s position on this issue is clear: speed up the return of the former Iraqi army – not the generals but the middle-ranking chiefs and officers “who alone have the numbers and the capacity to re-establish order”.

“The biggest mistake of the Americans was to dissolve the security forces and to purge the administrations of hundreds of thousands of members of the Baath party”, the main political force under Saddam Hussein, Abdullah said.