Iraqi election creates unusual alliances

The flap over the election date, which began Friday, illustrates the complexity of Iraq's ethnic-based politics. It also provides insights into the welter of conflicting interests and views in a fragmented country trying to build democracy in the midst of an armed uprising and foreign military occupation.

Sunni Muslim politicians pushed for the delay because of widespread anger within their community over this month's attack on the Sunni insurgent base of Fallujah, which in turn produced a call by Sunni clerics to boycott the vote.

In calling for a delay, the Sunnis managed to win backing of representatives from the country's two leading Kurdish parties. Collectively, the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs form about 40 percent of Iraq's nearly 26 million people the rest of whom are mostly Shias.

But when the Shia clerical leadership refused to delay the balloting, the Kurds waffled, claiming they never intended to agree to a postponement and they were ready for elections whenever they occur. The Iraqi National Accord, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party, took part in the meeting that produced the call for the delay.

But as soon as the Shias spoke out, Allawi's government said it was sticking by the Jan. 30 date and his Accord party also said it never intended to join in the call for an election delay.

One Shia official, asked not to be identified, said that if the Shias lost on the battle over the election date, they might demand their own autonomous region in the south similar to what the Kurds have in the north.

For the Kurds, a major goal is control of Kirkuk, a major oil-producing center and ethnically mixed city that is outside the Kurdish-ruled autonomous region. The city's major ethnic communities Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen each consider Kirkuk their own.

Kurdish parties have been encouraging Kurds who were displaced from the Kirkuk area by Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab, to return to the city. The goal is to increase Kurdish numbers in time for a parallel election Jan. 30, in which voters in the city will decide whether to join the Kurdish autonomous region.

Delaying the election would give the Kurds more time to boost their numbers in Kirkuk, political analysts say.

"The Kurdish political parties have interests in postponing the general elections for a certain period of time, simply to guarantee that the municipal elections in Kirkuk will be also postponed," Kurdish political analyst Assos Hardi said.

Before last week's postponement call, both Kurdish parties the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party had insisted that the referendum on the status of Kirkuk should not be held until the government had implemented Article 58 of Iraq's interim constitution.