Kirkuk vote descends into shouting and arrests

KIRKUK, Iraq - U.S.-backed voting in northern Iraq's main oil city ended Saturday with shouting, threats of an Arab walkout and interference by an American general - signs of ethnic divisions and a sense of powerlessness that the voting was meant to overcome.

U.S. officials had pointed to the balloting for an interim city council as a step toward resolving tensions that could disrupt the stability of Kirkuk, with its explosive ethnic mix and enormous oil wealth. This month, delegates in the northern city of Mosul elected a similar council to handle municipal affairs in what was called the first free voting in Iraq in decades.

But even before the voting started, five Arab delegates were detained by U.S. soldiers and taken from the municipality building in plastic handcuffs. U.S. military intelligence officials were questioning them for suspected ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

After the voting, Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division and the U.S. military leader in the area, ejected two independent delegates from the auditorium where the vote was announced for shouting their objections.

"If this is democracy, it isn't worth five fils (a nickel)," said Abdel Karim Habib, a former political prisoner who served as an independent elector Saturday.

But Nasser Ali, an Islamic preacher and independent delegate, saw it differently. "We want to move toward democracy," he said, "but some people want to create problems."

At issue is the extremely sensitive issue of the council's ethnic makeup. Kirkuk is sharply divided between ethnic Kurds and Arabs. Hussein expelled about 100,000 Kurds from the area to change the city's ethnic balance. But since Hussein's fall, Kurds have flocked to Kirkuk.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's crude oil production will double within a month, oil exports will resume within three weeks and U.S. troops will secure oil installations until Iraqis can take over the job, the acting postwar oil minister said Saturday.

Thamer al-Ghadhban said Iraq was producing 700,000 barrels of oil a day and working hard under U.S. occupation to increase that amount as quickly as possible.

"It is a matter of a few weeks, and we can reach 1.3- or 1.5-million barrels a day," al-Ghadhban said.

Prewar production under Saddam Hussein was about 3-million barrels daily.

BASRA, Iraq - Iraqi soldiers complained Saturday of the allies' plans to disband the country's armed forces, with some threatening to take up arms against American and British troops unless their salaries were continued.

About 50 Iraqi soldiers marched to one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces in Basra. They were turned away without incident by heavily armed British soldiers at the front gate. Similar complaints were raised by soldiers in Baghdad.

"If they don't pay us, we'll start problems," said Lt. Col. Ahmed Muhammad, 41, a 25-year navy veteran based in Basra.

On Friday, L. Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator in Iraq, issued an order dissolving Iraq's armed forces, abolishing institutions that he said "constituted and supported the most repressive activities of Saddam Hussein's regime."

UDAY'S LIONS FREED: Six lion cubs born in the cramped zoo owned by Saddam Hussein's son Uday will find freedom in the African bush.

The nonprofit SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary has secured the release of the six cubs, their mother and two other lions.

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