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Iraq to ensure January elections as violence surges
As loud explosions and heavy fighting rattled Baghdad on Sunday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiaral-Zibari told reporters that whether the January elections could be held as scheduled depends on future security situation, but the interim government will step up efforts for the goal. At a joint press conference here with his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Abul Gheit, Zibari said that to hold the race on time is a possible task, but not an easy one. It requires restoring stability to Iraq to some extent at first. "The interim government is facing a major test to prove its credibility to the Iraqi people by holding the elections," he said. "However, the government now has no second thought about the elections," he added. The visiting official said the government will exert efforts without any hesitation to make the elections go ahead as planned. He noted that Iraq's security situation is still under control of the interim government. Zibari is in Cairo for a meeting of Arab foreign ministers due on Tuesday. In another development, Egyptian presidential spokesman Maged Abdel-Fattah told reporters Sunday that the United States and the interim Iraqi government have been mulling over a three-axis plan to ensure that the January elections could be held on time. The spokesman said that President Hosni Mubarak met Sunday with US Mideast envoy William Burns over arrangements for holding the democratic elections in Iraq. Burns had reviewed the three-axis plan with Iraqi officials during his recent visit to Iraq.
"The first axis of the plan is a political one and is based on the reactivation of the UN role in Iraq and regaining Iraqi Sunni, Shiite and Kurd trust and encouraging them to partake in the election process so as to preserve Iraq's territorial integrity," Abdel-Fattah said. "The second axis, which is the security one, covers strategies to overcome any future security difficulties through offering more training to the biggest possible number of Iraqi police," he said, adding that Egypt has expressed its readiness to help in this respect. "The third axis, which covers economic matters, envisages the creation of new job opportunities and elimination of chronic economic problems," he said. Mubarak asserted to Burns Egypt's commitment to assisting the Iraqis in fulfilling their hopes, and underlined the importance of collective international efforts to end violence and restore stability to allow the Iraqi people to have a better life, he said. At least 110 people were killed across Iraq on Sunday in violence escalation. Loud explosions and heavy fighting rattled Baghdad, as a new round of violence between US-Iraqi forces and insurgents broke out in the Iraqi capital, the heaviest for months. A car bomb exploded on Sunday near a highway in western Baghdad, killing three Iraqi police officers and wounding four others, witnesses said. Earlier in the day, heavy fighting erupted in Haifa street in central Baghdad between US forces and insurgents and lasted for three hours, killing at least 13 people and wounding 55 others, the Health Ministry said. Witnesses said the casualty toll climbed when US helicopters fired at a crowd gathering around a burnt US tank in the area. Mazen al-Tomizie, a 26-year-old Palestinian journalist working for Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV was killed as he was reporting live from the scene, a colleague said. Also on Sunday, militants fired some 20 mortar rounds at the heavily-fortified Green Zone, the seat of the interim Iraqi government and the US embassy. The US military did not disclose the size of the damage. And almost simultaneously, two drivers were shot dead when trying to ram their booby-trapped cars into the Green Zone and the Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad, killing themselves. The prison has been at the center of a scandal over the abuse of Iraqi detainees by US soldiers. In another development, insurgents attacked a US military convoy on a road to the Baghdad international airport, a Xinhua photographer witnessed. The US vehicles were still on fire at around 11:30 a.m. (07:30 GMT). Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi's group swiftly claimed responsibility for attacks on the Green Zone and the Abu Ghraib prison. The group has also issued a new threat against Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in a purported taped message posted on the Internet. US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CBS TV said there would "undoubtedly be violence up until the elections and probably even during the elections". "But it is entirely possible to hold these elections," she said. To guarantee the safety of the Iraqi people, Allawi pledged Sunday to build up security forces. |
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