Iraqi Shias unveil poll coalition

The coalition, backed by leading Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani, presented a list of 228 candidates under the United Iraqi Alliance banner.

Shias make up about 60% of the population but they have never enjoyed significant political power in Iraq.

Under Saddam Hussein, the country was dominated by Sunni Muslims.

A spokesman for the committee that drew up the list said the movement led by radical cleric Moqtada Sadr was not included because it had not registered.

But he added that the Sadrist movement supported the religious authorities and their call for Iraqis to hold elections.

Last Wednesday, Iraq's two main Kurdish parties agreed to form a single candidate list.

The minority Sunni community has not presented a list of candidates. Sunni clerics from the Association of Muslim Scholars have urged Sunnis to boycott the election in protest against the US-led attack on the city of Falluja.

There are fears that the vote will be disrupted by the largely Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

The rebels target US-led occupation forces in Iraq and anyone they view as collaborators - including Iraqi government troops and the civil authorities.

'Balance'

Islamic Daawa party official Ali Adib told a Baghdad news conference that the Shia-backed slate of candidates included members of the Daawa party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution and the Iraqi National Congress.

The list also contained Sunnis, Yazidis, and Shia Kurds, he added.

"It contains parties and political currents, as well as independent figures of different confessions and ethnic groups, and takes into consideration the demographic and geographic balance in Iraq," said Mr Adib.

Iraqis are to elect 275 members of a national assembly in the 30 January poll.

Ayatollah Sistani is one of the most powerful and popular figures in the country, and correspondents say any list endorsed by him should stand a good chance in the polls.

Meanwhile, a spokesman from interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's office has denied a media report that the elections might be spread over several weeks to improve security conditions.

"These reports are false and inaccurate," said the spokesman, adding that Mr Allawi was misquoted by a Swiss newspaper.

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Iraq’s most powerful Shiite groups today unveiled a unified list of 228 candidates for the January 30 elections, a key step in their bid to take a leading role in post-Saddam Iraq after years on the sidelines. The list, however, does not include a key radical Shiite group or prominent Sunni factions.

In violence in the run-up to next month’s vote, seven Iraqis were killed in separate clashes in Baghdad and the volatile western city of Ramadi.

A car bomb also rocked a busy Mosul vegetable market, wounding two civilians, while a US soldier was injured by roadside bomb in Baghdad Another American soldier suffered minor injuries in a similar attack on Wednesday in Samarra, the scene of clashes that culminated in the resignation of the town’s police chief.

An aide to firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said no supporters of the radical preacher, a vehement opponent of the US-led occupation of Iraq, are in the al-Sistani-backed coalition called the United Iraqi Alliance. But al-Sadr’s movement, which has wide grass root support among impoverished and young Shiites, has previously sent mixed messages about its role in the country’s political process.

“We have not participated in this list and we are still suspending our participation in the elections,” Ali Semeisim said from the Shiite Muslim stronghold of Najaf in southern Iraq. “We have been subjected to a campaign of suppression and the arrests against al-Sadr followers are continuing.”

Al-Sadr’s supporters had said earlier they would not participate in the polls, which Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslims are expected to dominate, but it was believed they might be able to work out a compromise.

One of six people who drew up the coalition’s membership, nuclear physicist Hussain al-Shahristani, said al-Sadr’s movement had been left off because it has not registered with Iraq’s electoral commission.

“The Sadrist movement announced that it supports the religious authorities and its call for Iraqis to hold elections,” al-Shahristani added. “It also supports the list.”

The al-Sistani-backed coalition includes two major Shiite political parties – the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Dawa Party – and the Iraqi National Congress, led by former exile and one-time Pentagon favourite Ahmad Chalabi.

Chalabi’s spokesman, Haidar al-Moussawi, said several independent coalition members support al-Sadr’s political and religious stances.

“There are several names from the independents, who because of their sympathies and political stances, are affiliated with the Sadrist movement,” he said.

Independent Sunni Muslims belonging to various tribal groups are included on the list, but no major Sunni political movements were named.

“I think that this list is a patriotic list. We hope that Iraqi people will back this list,” Sheik Fawaz al-Jarba, head of the powerful Sunni Shemar tribes in the northwestern city of Mosul, said at the end of the conference.

A Shiite Kurdish group, members of the Yazidis minority religious sect, and a Turkomen movement were also included on the multi-party list for the elections – the first popular vote since Saddam Hussein’s ousting. Iraqis will choose a 275-member assembly that will write a permanent constitution. If adopted in a referendum next year, the constitution would form the legal basis for another general election to be held by December 15, 2005.

Under an election law adopted this year, there will be no electoral boundaries for the January vote, with the entire country treated as a single constituency.

Major parties representing Iraq’s 20% minority Sunnis have called for the vote’s postponement because they say the country is not secure enough. Sunni clerics from the Association of Muslim Scholars urged Sunnis to boycott the election to protest against last month’s US-led assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

The influential religious group reiterated its call for Sunnis to boycott the polls, describing as “madness” plans to hold them in January.

“The association’s stance toward the elections is firm and unchanged – we will not take a part in these elections because ... no elections can be held under the pressure of the Americans and the ... deteriorating security situation,” said Sheik Mohamed Bashar Al-Faidhi, an association spokesman.

Farid Ayar, spokesman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said the party of Sunni politician Adnan Pachachi, who supported the call for postponing the elections, was among the first to register after the sign-up process began on November 1.

He added, however, that the party – the Independent Democratic Movement – has yet to submit a candidates’ list. Pachachi was not immediately available for comment.

Al-Sistani, an Iranian-born cleric, has been working to unite Iraq’s majority Shiites ahead of the vote to ensure victory, plus include representatives from Iraq’s other diverse communities.

“The different parties and the national figures asked the religious authority to help it form an alliance that represents the Iraqi spectrum with its various religious, ethnic and geographic components,” al-Shahristani said.

Shiites comprise 60% of Iraq’s 26 million population. Despite their numbers, they’ve enjoyed little political power in Iraq, particularly under Saddam, who belonged to Iraq’s minority Sunni community.

In another play for post-election power, a senior Kurdish official said a Kurd should be made either president or prime minister following the polls.

“We have the right to ask for one of the (two) top positions in the government after the elections and we insist on taking one of them,” Arsalan Biez, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s political bureau, said from the northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah.

“We are as a nation like other world’s nations and we must receive our rights and demands.”

Kurds are estimated to number between 15% and 20% of the population and have enjoyed regional self-rule in the north since 1991.

In renewed violence, militants fired multiple mortar rounds towards an Iraqi National Guard base and the nearby Italian Embassy in Baghdad’s Waziriyah neighbourhood. Police Lt. Hussein Ali said three civilians were killed and five wounded.

Insurgents and US forces clashed in downtown Ramadi, a volatile city west of Baghdad, and four Iraqis were killed and three injured, according to Dr. Dhiaa Daham Hannoush of Ramadi General Hospital. US military officials had no immediate comment.

Two Iraqis were injured after a car bomb exploded in the northwestern city of Mosul, US military spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Hastings said. Iraqi policeman Hassan Ahmed said the blast happened in fruit and vegetable market.

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BAGHDAD, Dec 9 (AFP) - Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims on Thursday unveiled a broad alliance ahead of next month's key elections that is backed by their highest religious leader but which excludes radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) groups the Dawa party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, Dawa's Ali Adib told reporters here.

But Sadr, whose militia battled US-led forces in Baghdad and Najaf before calling a truce, is not on the 228-strong list backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said Hussein Shahrastani, a member of the organising committee.

Shahrastani said Sadr had not registered his group.

But Sadr "has said repeatedly that he supports the efforts of the Marjaya (the highest Shiite religious authority in Iraq) to unite Iraqis and to ensure the elections are free and fair," he added.

The UIA "contains parties and political currents as well as independent figures of different confessions and ethnic groups and takes into consideration the demographic and geographic balance in Iraq," said Adib.

The list presented Thursday to the electoral commission contained 25 groupings, at least eight of which are Shiite formations, he said. Sunnis, Failis (Kurdish Shiites), Turkmen, and Yazidis are also represented.

The Yazidis, who number just a few thousand in Iraq, worship a pre-Islamic god but have long been labelled as devil worshippers. They have lived since the 12th century near the northern town of Mosul.

The Failis live mostly in Diyala province just north of Baghdad and make up only two percent of Iraq's mostly Sunni Kurdish population. The Kurds themselves will also pick the 111 members of an autonomous parliament for their northern region in January's vote.

Overall, Iraqis are to elect 275 members of a national assembly in the vote planned for January 30, the country's first free and multi-party polls in half a century.

Representatives of Iraq's influential Shiite religious organisations have vehemently opposed calls by some parties for the vote to be postponed over security concerns.

Sistani is one of the most powerful and popular figures in the country and commentators say any list endorsed by him will be a strong contender in the polls.

He has confirmed his role as a major power broker in the country since last year's ouster of Saddam Hussein. Sadr emerged as the man who defended the holiest site in Shiite Islam, in the city of Najaf, against the formidable military might of the United States.

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