Iraq may face civil war after polls: US analysts

Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, a leading voice in Congress on foreign affairs, said Washington was stuck between two difficult choices.

"We are left with a bad choice in holding elections and a worse choice of not holding it," Biden told CNN on Sunday.

Another member of Congress, Democratic Representative Adam Smith, said the elections must take place as scheduled.

"It would be, I think, a really bad sign if they didn't," Smith stressed.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell for his part said Iraq's elections will take place on January 30 as planned.

"We are all worried about what's going to happen after the elections, but the elections are a necessary next step," Powell told ABC television.

But some US analysts worry that a lack of security in the Sunni Muslim regions could keep voters in those areas away from the polls, allowing Shias to dominate the elections and leading to more violence.

Two influential former US officials recently warned that Iraq could freefall into further violence and even civil war after the elections.

Former President George H.W. Bush's national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, sparked a debate after he warned last week that the Iraqi elections "rather than turning out to be a promising turning point, have the great potential for deepening the conflict."

And former secretary of state Henry Kissinger told CNN on Sunday: "We will have to decide to what extent we want to be involved in what may become a civil war (after the elections)."

But Kissinger, who negotiated an end to the Vietnam War in the 1970s, said the elections were "now a necessity."

"The consequences of not having it would be much graver than any benefit we would get from delay," he said.

"We will then, hopefully as a united country, be able to deal with creating some political structure in Iraq which will permit a gradual withdrawal of American forces over a period of time," Kissinger added.

Few in the United States are calling for a delay in the vote, a postponement which leading Iraqi Sunnis have requested.

Larry Diamond, a former adviser to the now-defunct US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, wrote in The New York Times that "Iraq is about to reach a point of no return."

Diamond said a delay could be negotiated in exchange for the cooperation of the Sunni opposition.

"What is needed now is for all of Iraq's social and political stakeholders to sit down and talk," wrote Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. "The outlines of a compromise are visible."

Meanwhile, President George W. Bush, in an interview published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, said he was working to make sure the Iraqi elections go forward as planned on January 30, but warned the vote was only a "first step" toward a permanent government.

"This is a step one of a series of steps necessary for Iraq to write a constitution ... And I think it is really important to keep this election in perspective ... that it's a part of a process ... out of which a constitution will be written, and a new form of government in a troubled region will emerge," said the US president.

Asked if there was a plan to bring the Iraqi Sunni population into the future government if they do not participate significantly in the upcoming election, Bush said the United States was working "to make sure the elections ... go forward with as big a participation as possible.

"We want there to be wide participation. We want there to be a government that is representative," Bush said while admitting he was also "realistic about Iraq."