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Source: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050130/D87U7A280.html Quote: BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqis voted Sunday in their country's first free election in a half-century, as insurgents made good on threats of violence with a car bomb and mortar attacks in at least two cities. Casting his vote, President Ghazi al-Yawer called it Iraq's first step "toward joining the free world."
Police reported an explosion near a polling station in western Baghdad an hour after polls opened, but there was no immediate word on casualties. Mortar fire and explosions were also heard in central Baghdad and in the religiously mixed city of Baqouba 30 miles northeast of the capital.
The violence came after insurgents had rocketed the U.S. Embassy in downtown Baghdad late Saturday, killing two Americans.
Al-Yawer was among the first to cast his ballot, voting alongside his wife at election headquarters in the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad. As poll workers watched, he marked two ballots and dropped them into boxes, and then walked away with an Iraqi flag given to him by a poll worker.
"I'm very proud and happy this morning," al-Yawer told reporters. "I congratulate all the Iraqi people and call them to vote for Iraq."
The election is a major test of President Bush's goal of promoting democracy in the Middle East. If successful, it also could hasten the day when the United States brings home its 150,000 soldiers.
Voters nationwide began trickling past police guards and heavy security into schools and other buildings converted into polling centers. About 300,000 Iraqi and American troops are on the streets and on standby to protect voters.
A spokesman for Iraq's elections commission said all the nearly 5,200 polling stations nationwide were opening on schedule.
Turnout was expected to be low in the early hours. Most attacks occur in the morning, and many Iraqis were likely to wait to see whether rebels carry through with threats of violence.
There were no signs of voting in the Sunni Muslim stronghold cities - and rebel centers - of Fallujah and Ramadi, west of Baghdad. Sunni extremists, fearing victory by the Shiites, have called for a boycott, claiming no vote held under U.S. military occupation is legitimate.
A low Sunni turnout could undermine the new government and worsen the tensions among the country's ethnic, religious and cultural groups.
Shiite Muslims, estimated at 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, are expected to turn out in large numbers, encouraged by clerics who hope their community will gain power after generations of oppression by the Sunni minority.
At one voting center in the heavily Shiite Muslim city of Nasiriyah in the south, about 40 people lined up waiting to vote.
Final results will not be known for seven to 10 days, but a preliminary tally was expected late Sunday.
Baghdad's streets were deserted at dawn. The only activity in one area was an American Humvee racing down an empty road in response to a burst of gunfire.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, buses hired by city officials picked up people walking toward voting centers to get them there more quickly.
Like al-Yawer, Iraqis will mark two ballots: one to elect the National Assembly, the other for a provincial legislature.
There were no immediate reports of violence at the polls, but an explosion was heard at the U.S. military base in Kirkuk in the north. Scattered small arms fire was heard near another U.S. base near Baghdad's airport.
"So far the situation is excellent in all areas," said the chairman of Iraq's electoral commission, Abdul-Hussein Hendawi. "All the polling centers, their doors are open. So far we haven't heard about any problems."
An Internet posting claiming to be from an al-Qaida linked group, which had earlier threatened to kill voters, warned Iraqis on Sunday that
"Democracy and representative councils, brothers, is part of the religion of the infidels. ... Accepting them is ... renouncing Islam,"
Insurgents have vowed to disrupt the vote, and threatened death to any Iraqis who show up. The country was under almost complete lockdown - across Iraq, U.S. tanks and armored vehicles blocked roads and bridges to prevent insurgent movement and the airport was closed.
Iraqi National Guardsmen, wearing black ski masks to hide their faces, roamed through the capital in SUVs and pickup trucks, machine guns mounted. Police and Iraqi soldiers set up checkpoints and randomly searched cars.
Iraqi officials have predicted that up to eight million of 14 million voters - just over 57 percent - will turn out for Sunday's election. Voters in the Kurdish-run north also will select a regional parliament.
Iraqi expatriates in 14 countries cast absentee ballots on the second of three days of voting abroad, and officials said that by late Saturday, about two-thirds of those registered had voted so far. Iraqi leaders had been disappointed that less than a quarter of the estimated 1.2 million expatriate Iraqis eligible to vote worldwide registered to do so.
Government spokesman Thaer al-Naqeeb warned Iraqis to expect "sabotage operations" carried out by "the enemies of Iraq."
But he encouraged Iraqis to vote nonetheless. "It is important. It will preserve the integrity of Iraq," he said. "If you vote ... the terrorists will be defeated."
Despite the strict security and a nighttime curfew, guerrillas hit the U.S. Embassy compound in the Green Zone with a rocket Saturday evening, killing a Defense Department civilian and a Navy sailor and wounding four other Americans, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay in Washington.
The Defense Department released grainy footage shot from an unmanned spy drone of what it said showed figures shooting a rocket and running away. It then showed U.S. soldiers entering a house where the suspected militants sought refuge, and said seven people were arrested.
Another American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. More than 40 American troops have been killed in the past three days.
Bush said in his weekly radio address from the White House that the election "will add to the momentum of democracy."
"The terrorists and those who benefited from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein know that free elections will expose the emptiness of their vision," he said.
A ticket endorsed by the country's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is expected to fare best among the 111 candidate lists. However, no faction is expected to win an outright majority, meaning possibly weeks of political deal-making before a new prime minister is chosen.
Throughout the Sunni heartland, there was little enthusiasm for the election.
"We will not vote because our houses have been destroyed," said Alaa Hussein of the Sunni city of Fallujah, which fell to a U.S. assault against insurgents in November. "We don't have electricity or water. The Iraqi National Guard fire at us 24 hours a day. So who will we vote for?"
By contrast, enthusiasm among Shiites was high.
"There's joy everywhere," said Mohammed Hussein, who lives in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
Fighting raged late Saturday in the ethnically mixed northern city of Kirkuk between police and insurgents. The clashes occurred in a predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood and lasted for about an hour, according to police Brig. Gen. Torhan Abdul-Rahman Youssef.
Also Saturday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt in front of a police station in the largely Kurdish town of Khanaqin, 70 miles northeast of Baghdad. Eight people were killed.
"We have one life and one God," said Mohammed Omar, 35, repeating an Arabic expression underlining the futility of trying to cheat death. "Our hearts have died. We no longer fear anything. If death is written, then there's nothing that we can do."
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01-30-2005, 08:46 AM 
