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BAGHDAD - Iraq's interim prime minister said Monday he's confident only a small number of people will boycott the Jan. 30 elections despite anger among many Sunni Muslims over the Fallujah offensive and a deadly U.S.-Iraqi raid on a Baghdad mosque.
"The forces of darkness and terrorism will not benefit from this democratic experience and will fight it," Ayad Allawi told the Associated Press. "But we are determined that this experiment succeeds."
Allawi spoke as violence raged in the capital and other cities, and the U.S. Embassy said a bomb was discovered Monday on a commercial flight inside Iraq.
Despite the violence, the Iraqi government Sunday set Jan. 30 as the date for parliamentary elections, the first since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.
Allawi, a secular Shiite handpicked by the Americans last June, said he believed that only "a very small minority" would abstain during the election "for one reason or another."
"Their reason will be political, and not sectarian, and they will not be more than 5, 6 or 7 percent," Allawi said in his office in the U.S.-guarded Green Zone. "They are the eventual losers."
Allawi is expected to run for a seat in the assembly, which would then choose the government.
U.S. officials are concerned that a boycott could deprive the new government of legitimacy in the eyes of the Sunni Arabs, who make up an estimated 20 percent of the nearly 26-million population. The majority Shiites, believed to form 60 percent of the population, strongly support elections.
Allawi's remarks came as an international conference on Iraq convened Monday at the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheik, where delegates expressed support for his government and the January vote. The conference, which brings together 20 nations including the United States and Iraq's neighbors, is designed to muster support for Iraq's government.
Also ...AID ENTERS FALLUJAH: On Monday, an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy carried blankets, water and first-aid kits into Fallujah, the first time an independent organization has been able to visit the city since U.S.-led forces invaded two weeks ago.
Allawi was defiant in his defense of the Fallujah operation, describing it as an unqualified success.
"We went to Fallujah and we broke their back," he said. "We found enough weapons there to destroy an entire country."
He said that because of the success in Fallujah, "those who will try to obstruct democracy and election are finished. ... They don't have a safe haven anymore."
SUNNI CLERIC KILLED: In the northern city of Mosul, a prominent member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the organization calling for an election boycott, was shot and killed Monday by gunmen at his home. Sheik Faidh Mohamed Amin al-Faidhi, was the brother of the association's national spokesman, and his killing was likely to anger Sunnis in the city.
STOCKPILE UNCOVERED: Near Mosul, U.S. forces Monday uncovered a weapons stockpile that included antiaircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles and a building filled with explosive materials, the U.S. military said. The haul included one antiaircraft gun, 15,000 antiaircraft rounds, 4,600 hand grenades, 144 grenade launchers, 25 surface-to-air missiles, 21 mortar rounds, 10 rockets and artillery rounds.
BODIES FOUND: Elsewhere, Iraqi security forces recovered 12 bodies, including five decapitated ones, from an area south of Baghdad, police said Monday. One was identified as a member of the Iraqi National Guard. The bodies were found during a raid Sunday in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, said Lt. Adnan Abdullah. The area has been described as the "triangle of death" because of the large number of fatal attacks against Shiites and foreigners.
U.S. DEATH TOLL RISES: A U.S. soldier died Monday of wounds suffered in an attack in Baghdad the night before. The Pentagon also announced that three Marines wounded in Fallujah have died, raising the U.S. death toll in the offensive to at least 54. At least 1,228 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count.