Iraq expats vote as election enters final straight

An estimated 1.4 million Iraqis from the war-wracked nation's large diaspora began to cast their votes Friday in 16 different countries.

BAGHDAD, March 5, 2010 (AFP) - Politicians launched into their last day of campaigning on Friday as more than a million Iraqis living abroad began voting in an election that could turn the page on years of deadly sectarian strife.

The final days of the campaign for Sunday's parliamentary poll, the second since US-led troops ousted Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, have been rocked by a series of suicide attacks that left dozens dead.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the Shiite head of the State of Law Alliance who this week boasted he was "certain" of victory, was due to give a press conference later on Friday in a final push to win support.

Some of the 6,200 other candidates from across Iraq's complex religious and ethnic spectrum were appearing on television and radio at the end of a campaign in which public meetings and street electioneering were largely absent.

An estimated 1.4 million Iraqis from the war-wracked nation's large diaspora began to cast their votes Friday in 80 cities in 16 different countries.

Ahmed Fuad, a 22-year-old student, said as he emerged from a polling station in Amman in neighbouring Jordan that he backed Shiite ex-premier Iyad Allawi, whose secular Iraqiya list has strong support in Sunni areas.

"I hope the situation will improve there (in Iraq) so we can go back to our country. We are fed up with homesickness," said Fouad.

On Thursday, a day of early voting for hundreds of thousands of soldiers and police due to work on Sunday, was marred by two suicide attacks at polling stations that killed seven troops and a mortar attack that killed seven civilians.

A day earlier, three suicide attacks, one by a bomber who rode in an ambulance to hospital before blowing himself up, killed 33 people in the central city of Baquba.

Those attacks came despite a massive security operation that saw 200,000 police and soldiers deployed in the Iraqi capital alone.

Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Omar al-Baghdadi had threatened to disrupt the election by "military means" but so far no group has claimed responsibility for this week's violence.

The US military sees Sunday's poll as a crucial precursor to a withdrawal of combat troops in August and said it would continue to provide Iraqi security forces with intelligence, logistical and air support for the election.

Sunday's vote will usher in a government tasked with tackling violence, an economy in tatters and state institutions mired in corruption.

Sunni Arab voters are expected to turn out in force, in stark contrast to the last parliamentary election in 2005 which they mostly boycotted in protest at the rise to power of Iraq's long-oppressed Shiite majority.

That boycott deepened the sectarian divide and heightened violence that killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and which has only eased in the past two years.

A Shiite is almost certain to become prime minister.

Shiites were united in the 2005 polls but this time round are divided, a development hailed by some as a move away from rigid sectarian politics.

Also competing with Maliki and Allawi for the top job are former deputy premier Ahmed Chalabi, who was once favoured but is now loathed by Washington, Shiite Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi and Finance Minister Baqer Jaber Solagh.

Under Iraq's electoral system no one party will emerge with the 163 seats needed to form a government on its own and the ensuing horse-trading to form a governing coalition is likely to be protracted.

"It's hard to put an actual timeframe on it, but we are talking months, not weeks," a senior US official said in Washington on Thursday.

"We anticipate a difficult process," full of challenges and claims of fraud "because the stakes are so high," the official added, asking not to be identified.

Campaigning in the weeks leading up to the election has been dominated by a bitter feud over who can stand.

Around 500 candidates, both Sunni and Shiite, were excluded from the poll after being accused of links to Saddam's outlawed Baath party.