Voting starts in Iraq

2005-01-30 08:19

Baghdad - Voters trickled into polling stations under tight security on Sunday in Iraq, casting ballots despite insurgent vows to sabotage the country's first free election in a half-century.

Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawer was one of the first to vote at election headquarters in the heavily fortified Green Zone, calling the action his country's first step "toward joining the free world".

Across the nation, the nearly 5 200 polling stations opened on schedule, with workers checking voter identifications and police standing guard.

Turnout was expected to be slow in the early hours. Most attacks occur in the morning, and many Iraqis were likely to wait to see whether rebels carry through with threats.

There were no immediate reports of attacks, but an explosion was heard at the US military base at Kirkuk in the north.

Scattered small arms fire was heard near another US base close to Baghdad's airport.

At one voting centre in the heavily Shiite Muslim city of Nasiriyah in the south, about 40 people lined up waiting to vote. Shiite turnout is expected to be the heaviest.

But there were no signs of voting in the Sunni Muslim stronghold cities - and rebel centres - of Fallujah and Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

In the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk in the north, buses hired by city officials picked up voters walking along the streets and ferried them to polling stations. Kurdish voters there are expected to turn out in big numbers.

Baghdad's streets were mostly deserted in the early morning. The only activity on one stretch of empty road was an American Humvee racing in response to a burst of gunfire.

"So far the situation is excellent in all areas," said the chairperson of Iraq's electoral commission, Abdul-Hussein Hendawi. "All the polling centres, their doors are open. So far we haven't heard about any problems."

Final results were not expected for days.

A web posting claiming to be from an al-Qaeda linked group warned Iraqis that "democracy and representative councils, brothers, is part of the religion of the infidels. ...Accepting them is ... renouncing Islam."

Even before voting began, mortar fire boomed across Baghdad as the world awaited the vote that will echo from militant Islamic websites in the Mid-East to the halls of the White House. Insurgents fired rockets the US Embassy late on Saturday in Baghdad, killing two Americans. Seven people were arrested for the attack.

As poll workers watched, al-Yawer marked two ballots - one for the 275-member national assembly and the other for provincial legislatures - and then dropped them into boxes. A poll worker handed him an Iraqi flag as he left.

"I'm very proud and happy this morning," he told reporters. "I congratulate all the Iraqi people and call them to vote for Iraq."

His wife, Nesreen Mustafa Berwari, a minister of public works in the country's interim government, followed him shortly afterward. "This is a shining day on the road to the new Iraq," she said.

- AP