Iraq

Campaign starts, with a bang

As Iraqis declare themselves for office, a deadly bombing is directed at a leading Shiite candidate.

BAGHDAD - Violence marred Iraq's first official day of parliamentary election campaigning Wednesday as interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced his candidacy for the Jan. 30 vote, painting himself as the antidote to "religious and ethnic fanaticism."

A powerful bomb exploded Wednesday evening at the gate of a Shiite Muslim shrine in the southern holy city of Karbala, killing at least nine people and wounding more than 40, hospital officials said.

Sheik Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalayee, a representative of the leading cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al Husseini al-Sistani and a candidate on the dominant Shiite slate, was the apparent target of the blast.

Karbalayee was unconscious Thursday night and had a severe leg wound, but his injuries weren't life-threatening, said Dr. Ali al-Hasnawi, the manager of the Karbala Health Directorate. At least two of Karbalayee's bodyguards were among the dead.

The campaign has exposed the rift between secular Iraqi politicians such as Allawi and their main opponents: powerful Shiite factions who are likely to dominate the polls. Who wins could determine whether Iraq drifts closer to an Iranian-style theocracy or becomes the model of Middle Eastern democracy that the Bush administration advocates.

Allawi delayed his own announcement by several hours Wednesday morning and declined to release other names on his list. That raised speculation about last-minute haggling behind the scenes.

In particular, it was unclear whether interim President Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer would join Allawi's list of candidates for the new national assembly or form his own slate.

Without reviewing the names on Allawai's list, it was hard to gauge how representative it will be. The inclusion of Yawer, a Sunni Muslim who has said he may offer his own list, would be key, political experts said.

"That would give him a broader platform," said Saad Jawad, head of the political bureau for the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Several members of Allawi's Cabinet turned up on other lists. For example, Adnan Pachachi, a senior Sunni Muslim politician and a former member of the now-defunct U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, revealed a slate that includes at least five of Allawi's ministers. The justice minister turned up on yet another ticket.

In the election, each faction will win a number of seats in the assembly proportional to the percentage of votes it gets nationwide - meaning the highest-listed candidates on each roster are most likely to be elected. The groups ending up strongest in the assembly will be in a powerful position as the body will elect a president and two deputies, who will nominate the prime minister. The assembly will also draw up a constitution.

Shiites make up 60 percent of the 26-million Iraqis and are expected to dominate the polls. Such an outcome worries some secular Shiites in Iraq, along with neighboring Sunni-dominated countries and the United States, who are wary of a Shiite-run Iraq growing closer to its eastern neighbor, Iran.

"Iran will not be indifferent to Iraq's future, and it cannot ignore the country because any developments there would have an impact on the internal affairs of Iran," Hasan Kazemi Qomi, Iran's top diplomat in Baghdad, told his country's official Islamic Republic News Agency.

In Karbala, witnesses said the bomb appeared to have been planted in the road along Martyrs' Street, at the western gate of the Imam Hussein shrine. Karbalayee was leaving his library when the bomb detonated, several witnesses said.

Sheik Homam Hamoodi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a candidate on the Shiite ticket, blamed the attack on "those who escaped from Fallujah and want to spread their destruction to other places." Hamoodi confirmed that Karbalayee was a candidate for the elections, making him the second member of the slate to come under attack. On Dec. 8, gunmen killed three members of the Shiite Hezbollah party in Baghdad.

Campaign mudslinging also began Wednesday when Allawi's defense minister, Hazem Shalan al-Khuzaei, accused Shiite politicians of trying to "bring back Saddam Hussein, but in a turban." In a fiery speech to American and Iraqi military officials in Baghdad, Khuzaei also warned that Iran and Syria were among the neighboring countries aiding militants in Iraq.

"They are fighting us because we want to build freedom and democracy and they want to build an Islamic dictatorship and have turbaned clerics rule in Iraq," said Khuzaei, who comes from the mostly Shiite southern city of Diwaniya.

Khuzaei was especially harsh on Hussain al-Shahristani, a Shiite nuclear physicist who was imprisoned under Hussein's regime and who was a key organizer of the United Iraqi Alliance. Shahristani's slate of 228 mostly Shiite candidates - formed under the auspices of Sistani, the country's most prominent cleric - is touted as the Shiites' vehicle to power after decades of oppression.

Hamoodi said members of the United Iraqi Alliance were angered by Allawi's reference to religious extremists and his defense minister's remarks about the alleged influence of Iran on the Shiite campaign.

"We welcome Allawi and our brothers into the field of elections, but we feel that the Iraqi people prefer to choose those who suffered from the oppression of the old regime and who spent their lives in Saddam's dark cells and torture chambers," Hamoodi said. Allawi and many of his colleagues lived in exile during much of Saddam's rule.

A voice for unity came from an unlikely source Wednesday. The Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who's led bloody uprisings and called for armed resistance to American forces, issued a statement from the southern holy city of Najaf asking candidates to run "a clean election process that will honor us and take this country from darkness to light."

Sadr's militant movement didn't register as a political party and isn't on the ballot, Shiite politicians said.

"I'll be Sunni, Shiite or Kurdish as long as I'm an Iraqi," Sadr vowed in the statement. "I'll always defend the rights of the minorities and make sure they have their share in the elections."

Wednesday was the deadline for candidates to register. The elections will choose a 275-member national assembly that will draft a constitution and help supervise national elections for a permanent government by the end of next year. Candidates are forming slates, mostly along ethnic or religious lines, that will divvy up power proportionate to the number of votes received.

Allawi is working to undo his six-month legacy of controversial American-led battles in Najaf and Fallujah, deteriorating basic services and fledgling security forces widely viewed as corrupt and incompetent. His image as a strongman has suffered partly because of his reliance on U.S. airstrikes, which have flattened parts of important cities.

Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press was used in this report.

ABDEL-AZIZ AL-HAKIM: Shiite cleric who heads the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; allied to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Hussein al-Sistani. Heads the list of the 228-member electoral coalition known as the United Iraqi Alliance.

AYAD ALLAWI: Interim prime minister; moderate Shiite Muslim. Leads the Iraqi List coalition.

IBRAHIM AL-JAAFARI: Shiite; main spokesman for the Islamic Dawa Party, which is part of the United Iraqi Alliance.

ADNAN PACHACHI: Former member of Governing Council; secular Sunni. Heads the Independent Democratic Gathering.

AHMAD CHALABI: Onetime Pentagon confidant; fell out with Washington this year. Secular Shiite. Candidate on United Iraqi Alliance list.

HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI: Nuclear scientist. One of six people Sistani chose to draw up the United Iraqi Alliance list.

- Associated Press

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