'No election' for parts of Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 11 - Prime Minister Ayad Allawi acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that "pockets" of Iraq would be too dangerous for voters to cast ballots in the election this month, as insurgents continued their effort to disrupt the campaign, killing at least 15 Iraqis and attacking one of the country's main election offices.

In a televised address, Dr. Allawi said he hoped that American and Iraqi security forces would be able to pacify many of the country's most chaotic areas before the Jan. 30 vote. By election day, he said, the areas too dangerous for voting would probably be limited in number and small.

"Hostile forces are trying to hinder this event," he said. "Certainly, there will be some pockets where people will not be able to participate in the elections, but we do not think it will be widespread."

Dr. Allawi's statement is his first public acknowledgement that some areas of Iraq will probably prove too violent to support the nationwide election, the centerpiece of the American effort to bring democracy and stability to this restive land.

Last week, the commander of American ground forces here, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, said parts of four Iraqi provinces, most of them dominated by Sunni Arabs, were not yet safe enough for voting. But he also said the military would continue to focus on halting violence in those areas in time for the election.

The acknowledgement by Dr. Allawi comes amid a major increase in violence by the insurgents, who have killed more than 100 Iraqi police officers and soldiers this month, and who have begun to employ larger and more sophisticated bombs to kill American soldiers. On Monday, guerrillas assassinated Baghdad's deputy police chief, and in another attack, killed two American soldiers with a huge homemade bomb.

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PRIME Minister Iyad Allawi has acknowledged that some parts of Iraq would not be able to take part in this month's election as new attacks killed at least 25 people, six of them in a car bombing in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.

"There are some pockets that will not participate in the election but they are not large," Mr Allawi said.

The US-backed premier vowed to spend $US2.2 billion ($2.9 billion) this year to bolster the security forces fighting a bloody insurgency in central Iraq that has cost thousands of lives.

"When our forces are capable of taking over the war against the insurgents, we will be able to begin discussions with the multinational forces on the Iraq army taking over the lead role in maintaining security in Iraqi towns," he said.

The insurgency has been fanned in part by widespread concern among the Sunni Arab elite, which dominated Saddam's regime and all previous Iraqi governments, that the new parliament will be dominated by the long-oppressed Shiite majority.

Mr Allawi said the insurgency had cost Iraq more than $US10 billion in sabotage against oil and power infrastructure alone.

In the latest assaults on Iraq's oil distribution network, two pipelines near the northern oil centre of Kirkuk were set ablaze, officials said.

As the clock ticked down to polling day on January 30, sectarian tensions entered the campaign, as the premier's Iraqi National Accord party cried foul over the alleged use of religion by Shiite politicians.

The INA lodged a formal complaint against the joint Shiite list, the Unified Iraqi Alliance (UIA), for violating state law by allegedly using religion in its advertising. It also accused Shiite militias of intimidating voters ahead of the poll.

Yesterday's bombing in Tikrit targeted a police station and came a day after Baghdad's deputy police chief was assassinated. All of the casualties were police, the US military said.

Militants loyal to Iraq's most wanted man, al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said they carried out the bombing, in an Internet statement.

In the Sunni belt immediately south of the capital, dubbed the triangle of death because of the frequency of rebel attacks, three Iraqi civilians were killed and three wounded in a roadside bombing near Yussufiyah, witnesses and a hospital source said.

The bombing apparently targeted a US military convoy but the casualties were on a passing minibus.

North of Baghdad, five Iraqi soldiers and a civilian were killed in two separate attacks in the city of Samarra, recaptured from insurgents in a US-led assault in October, police said.

An Iraqi interpreter for the Americans was shot dead near the main northern city of Mosul, while two police officers were killed by gunmen in the capital, police said.

Further west, two Iraqi women were killed by mortar fire near the notorious US-run Abu Ghraib prison, the military said.

A member of the prime minister's party was killed, bringing the number of INA supporters killed in the past two months to 22, party official Imad Shibib told AFP.

And three Iraqi soldiers were killed in an ambush in the northern city of Mosul, as well as a truck driver, the US military said.

US President George W. Bush, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, said he was working to ensure the elections went ahead as planned on January 30, but warned the vote was only a "first step" towards a permanent government.

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2005 Iraqi Ballot