Voter Lists Are Prepared in Another Step Toward Polls

[kchubb]

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 16 - Lists containing the names of millions of registered Iraqi voters have been printed and are on their way to election officials here, bringing the country a step closer to the national balloting on Jan. 30, the chief United Nations election official, Carlos Valenzuela, said Sunday.

The lists are still not final: they will be posted at hundreds of district offices around the country. There, people whose names are missing can petition to be included, and the validity of names on the list can be challenged - for example, because a registered voter is dead or has moved away.

The time for challenges will last from Jan. 20 to 25, a delay of five days from the original plan. But Mr. Valenzuela said election workers were also close to settling on the locations of more than 5,000 polling places across Iraq, indicating that there was no reason to think that voting could not take place on the scheduled date.

With no time to spare, Mr. Valenzuela said that in his view, "What has been achieved has been extraordinary so far."

As efforts toward the election geared up, the Oil Ministry announced that a sabotaged pipeline carrying crude oil from northern fields to Turkey would begin operating again within two weeks.

In Ramadi, west of Baghdad, the police found the body of an Egyptian truck driver lying on the street, Reuters reported. Officers identified the man as Ibrahim Muhammad Ismail, an employee of a Kuwaiti company. Workers for foreign companies have been a favorite target of insurgents who are trying to undermine the interim government in Iraq.

American military forces continued a series of raids in the restive northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, uncovering several weapons caches and bomb materials, and detaining suspected insurgents, the military said. In one case, soldiers found more than 1,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and 55 gallons of diesel fuel, common materials for making explosives, the military said.

Speaking to a few reporters in the fortresslike convention center within the walled and heavily guarded green zone in Baghdad, Mr. Valenzuela, the election official, said he was surprised at how few Iraqi election workers had left the job because of violence and intimidation by insurgents.

He said that he knew of eight workers who had been killed and added that perhaps dozens more had resigned out of several thousand. But he said that all had been quickly replaced. If the level of violence remains constant until the elections, he said, there is no reason to think that resignations will be a major impediment. That assessment could change, though, if the violence intensifies, he said.

Mr. Valenzuela insisted that reports of mass resignations of election officials in Mosul and in Anbar Province, where Falluja and Ramadi are located, were inaccurate.

"That is just not true," he said. "It has not happened."

Still, he said, the violence is likely to keep some Iraqis who would otherwise vote from doing so.

The violence has had a noticeable effect on registration in parts of Nineveh Province, which contains Mosul, and in Anbar. Election workers have not been able to register voters in those areas using the so-called public distribution system, which the government relies on to distribute food, as they have in other areas.

So people in both those places will be allowed to register on the day of voting, and on Sunday Mr. Valenzuela said voters in Anbar, many of whom were displaced by the fighting in Falluja in the past months, would receive additional help: polling stations will be set up for them in western Baghdad.

Whether the people will be able to get to the stations is another question, because the government intends to put in place strict travel restrictions in order to hamper the movement of insurgents on election day.