Turkey’s democratic initiative welcomed in troubled Kerkuk

Sivan Abdullah (L), a Kurd, and Ihsan Yemenji, a Turkmen, have called each other brothers for 17 years.

A government initiative to solve the decades-old Kurdish issue through democratic reforms has been welcomed in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, the control of which is disputed among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens.

Residents believe the democratic reform efforts will reduce the sympathy in the city for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Before the planned Iraqi general elections in January of next year, there is growing enthusiasm among Kirkuk residents regarding Turkey’s democratic initiative. People in Kirkuk, which was once a main source of conflict between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds running northern Iraq, are now optimistic that Ankara’s Kurdish initiative will have positive repercussions in the disputed city as well.

Turkmeneli Party Deputy Chairman Ali Mahdi, who is also a member of the city council, told Today’s Zaman that improved relations between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds will benefit the Turkmens in Kirkuk as well and asked Turkish officials to visit Kirkuk, recalling a recent visit by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu to Arbil.

For Islamic Party of Kurdistan Deputy Chairman and Kirkuk City Council member Ibrahim Khalil Rashid, the democratic initiative is undermining support for the PKK in Kirkuk. “The democratic initiative is very vital for Turkey. If it ends with peace, it will be quite good. It will also positively affect us. The initiative is being closely monitored here, too. We are watching developments. Now there is much support for Turkey.

Previously, there was support for the PKK, but not now; people have started to ask: ‘Turkey has provided a chance for you to return to Turkey. There is a democratic initiative about the situation of Kurdish people. Why aren’t you returning and laying down your weapons?’” he said.
Jamal Ja’fari, a Turkmen resident of Kirkuk, believes that Turkey’s democratic initiative will also positively affect the Turkmens’ situation in the city. “Peace in Turkey means peace here,” Ja’fari said.

Turkey has threatened in the past to wage war on the Iraqi Kurds if they forcefully attempt to control Kirkuk and damage the interests of the Turkmens, who share close ethnic ties with Turkey. Kurds claim the control of the city, saying Kirkuk historically belongs to the Kurdish region. Arabs and Turkmens, however, dispute the Kurdish claims.
Kurdish resident Silvan Abdullah said he believed the initiative will have repercussions not only in Turkey but all over the world. “It may also benefit our neighbors and the peace within Kirkuk. In fact, we do not have any problems with Turkmens living here,” Abdullah said.



17 November 2009, Tuesday

MELIK DUVAKLI KIRKUK

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-193146-100-turkeys-democratic-initiative-welcomed-in-troubled-kirkuk.html

A Weak Attempt at Rebuttal: Galbraith (2009) Is Contradicted by Galbraith (2006)

http://gulfanalysis.wordpress.com/

Posted by Reidar Visser on November 16, 2009

The NYT has previously been generous in offering space to Peter Galbraith and may have felt it had some explaining to do to its readers. The above example is from 9 July 2006.

“Innuendo.” “Absurd.” “Offensive.” Those are the words employed by Peter Galbraith over the weekend in an attempt to dismiss the charge that he had an impact on the shape of Kurdish demands in Iraq’s constitutional negotiations back in 2005. After a front-page, above-the-fold story in the New York Times last week, the Tawke-gate saga has for the first time attracted the attention of US mainstream media in a big way and Galbraith is gradually becoming more talkative.

Galbraith now maintains that his role for the Kurds back in 2004 and 2005 was that of a mere facilitator who had no impact on the formulation of Kurdish goals and ambitions as such – which in his view means that it was also unproblematic for him to simultaneously have a consultancy contract with the Norwegian oil company DNO, which began operating in the Kurdish areas of Iraq at the time. He has added that the fact that his “business arrangements” were known to the Kurdish leadership meant it was unproblematic for him to sit in on key meetings related to the constitutional process in the summer of 2005. Galbraith stresses that he “did no drafting”.

The fundamental problem for Peter Galbraith is that there exists a detailed published account that tells a very different story. Moreover, this source is authored by someone who was extremely close to those events back in 2004 and 2005 and probably knew a lot about what was going on – Peter Galbraith himself. In his book The End of Iraq, published in 2006, Galbraith recounts in considerable detail how he not only made an impact through shaping Kurdish demands, but also how almost all of his suggestions were verbatim inserted in the Kurdish negotiating proposal of February 2004 that later was to have such a great impact on the Iraqi constitution that was eventually adopted in 2005.

On p. 160 of his book, Galbraith describes his own arrival on the scene in 2003 as follows: “While they had secured support from the Iraqi opposition for federalism, the Kurds had yet to think through some practical issues. What powers would belong to Kurdistan and what to the central government in Baghdad…Who would control the police and security forces? And there was the all-important issue, who would own the oil of Kurdistan?”

Galbraith then goes on to bemoan the “conceptual problems” of the Kurdish leaders before he describes the liberating effect of memos written by himself from the summer of 2003 onwards. His choice of verbs tells the whole story: “I urged”… “Kurdistan should”… “I argued”.

Among his demands was the following: “Kurdistan should, I argued, own and manage its own oil resources”. Summing up his contribution, Galbraith remarks on p. 161: “These ideas [referring to his own proposals] eventually became the basis of Kurdistan’s proposal for an Iraqi constitution”. The reader clearly gets the impression that Galbraith’s role was a decisive and even a transformative one – an interpretation that makes sense also on the basis of a comparison with the previous and much less radical constitutional proposal by the Kurdish leadership from 2003 (where in article 59.4 Baghdad was given control of “all kinds of armed forces”, and in article 59.11 the oil sector was similarly described as the prerogative of the central government).

Later, on pp. 166–67 of his book from 2006, Galbraith describes how his own more detailed proposal in early 2004 was more or less copied wholesale by the Kurds to form their negotiating position as defined in February 2004. He summarises his paper Special Provisions for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq which is also reproduced in toto in an appendix to the book on pp. 225–29.

These proposals – which included the key distinction between existing and future oil fields that would later enable stronger regional influence over new oilfields in the 2005 constitution and which forms the basis for the current dispute between Baghdad and the Kurds over oil – was “accepted” by the Kurdish leadership, and then forwarded to the CPA, “as a submission by the Kurdistan National Assembly”!

According to Galbraith, his own proposals became the Kurdish proposal in all its details save for one extremely minor “amendment”: “Kosrat Rasul…wanted to clarify that deployment of the Iraqi Kurdistan National Guard should not only be approved by the Kurdistan National Assembly, but should only occur a the request of the federal government in Baghdad”. All the rest had been penned by Galbraith.

As to the influence of this “proposal” on the constitution of 2005, Galbraith is once more an excellent source. On p. 168 of The End of Iraq, he explains, “Masud Barzani took the initiative to organise a Kurdish delegation and negotiating position that would achieve each objective outlined in their February 11 proposal [which Galbraith had formulated in its entirety] and then some.” Galbraith’s book is also informative when it comes to his own role in radicalising the Kurdish position during late 2004 and 2005, especially on p. 171: “In September 2004, the Referendum Movement organisers [who campaigned for a referendum for Kurdish independence] asked me to meet with them… As we sipped Turkish coffee, we discussed how other independence movements had promoted their own causes. I recalled that at least one independence movement conducted an unofficial referendum on the same day as the country’s general election, setting up informal polling places near the official ones.

The Referendum Movement leaders thought this was an interesting precedent but doubted that the Kurdish authorities would allow it. I explained that in a democracy the authorities could not prevent such expression of free speech as long as the organisers did not interfere in the official voting”. As is well known, the referendum was indeed held along the lines suggested by Galbraith. Not bad for an “adviser”?

In a key paragraph of his book on p. 169, Galbraith summarises the way in which many elements of the “Kurdish” proposal of 11 February 2004 actually found their way into Iraq’s 2005 constitution. For example, he writes, “as the Kurds proposed in February 2004 the regional governments have exclusive control over future oil fields.”

Note, however, how different this sentence looks when we insert in brackets the information given by Galbraith himself elsewhere: “As the Kurds proposed in February 2004 [entirely on the basis of my own proposal, as described in my book The End of Iraq on pp. 166–67] the regional governments have exclusive control over future oil field [in one of which I hold a business interest through DNO, as I explained to The Boston Globe on 15 October 2009].

Because of these contradictions, Galbraith is today trying to describe exactly the same relationship using very different words: Three days, ago, on 13 November, he told The Brattleboro Reformer (a local newspaper in Vermont) that “I gave them advice and the end result that they achieved was identical to what was already proposed in February 2004 [emphasis added]”.

What Peter Galbraith does not admit in 2009 is what he boasted of in 2006, namely that 99% of the February 2004 proposal was his own work and not that of any Kurdish leader.

In retrospect, it may seem odd that Galbraith should have chosen to publish a book in 2006 that would implicate him so clearly in an unacceptable mixing of roles in business (DNO), constitutional consultancy (for the Kurds) and Iraqi policy advocacy (at home in the United States).

However, the book from 2006 was a reflection of its time. Iraq seemed to be heading downhill back then, and Galbraith was probably convinced the country would break apart (as per his suggestion). Accordingly, he was not only extremely forthcoming with information concerning his own role; he actually appeared to be glowing with the pride of a would-be Kurdish T.E. Lawrence.

What he failed to realise was that Iraq was a little more resilient than the pessimistic title of his book suggested.

In other respects, there is not much that is new in Galbraith’s latest attempts at rebutting the NYT article. He still has the audacity to suggest that the fact that he informed “Kurdish leaders” exonerated him from any possible conflict of interest!

What about the rest of the Iraqis who participated in the negotiations, did they know everything as well? And what about those in the drafting committee who did not belong to KDP/PUK and SCIRI/Daawa and were excluded from the “leadership meetings” in early August 2005, where key decisions were made, and where Galbraith himself participated repeatedly?

Iraq’s former ambassador to the UN, Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi has said it best: “You don’t let Firestone draft the constitution of Liberia. You don’t let Shell draft the constitution of Nigeria. We shouldn’t have had an oil company [i.e. Norway’s DNO] drafting the Iraqi constitution.”

Finally, in a welcome development, the editorial board of the NYT has ruled that Galbraith did indeed have a conflict of interest which should have been disclosed when he wrote op-eds in the paper in favour of the soft partition policy in Iraq.

This should make it clear once and for all that there is more to this case than the primitive Norwegian “conspiracy” alleged by some Vermont newspapers, according to which the whole affair has been fabricated by all-powerful Norwegian trolls bent on revenge for the Eide/Galbraith dispute in Afghanistan.

Evlerinin önü yonca - Kerkük Türküsü

Sinan Sait ve Nermin Memedova

What all Iraqis should know about the Fortune of Jalal Talabani

الى جميع العراقيين
تعرفوا على ثروة جلال الطالباني بالأرقام والأدلة



What all Iraqis should know about the fortune of Jalal Talabani
see:

http://www.albasrah.net/ar_articles_2009/1009/horami_241009.htm

Galbraith Was Paid by DNO when He Sat In on Sensitive Constitutional Drafting Sessions in 2005

Posted by Reidar Visser on November 12, 2009

http://gulfanalysis.wordpress.com/


In many ways, today’s story in The New York Times on Tawke-gate serves to corroborate the account of events already conveyed earlier by Norway’s Dagens Næringsliv (DN). In particular, the impression that it was the Norwegian oil company DNO (rather than the KRG) that awarded a stake in the Tawke oilfield to Peter Galbraith back in 2004 is strengthened in the article, and there are interesting remarks by Abd al-Hadi al-Hassani, one of the few officials close to the Maliki administration who has had the courage to comment publicly on the affair so far. Also, it is refreshing that the NYT, which in the past has given ample space to Americans advocating a soft partition of Iraq, has chosen to publish this kind of critical perspective on one of the leading intellectuals of the soft partition crowd.

Perhaps the single most significant piece of new information in the story is the confirmation that Peter Galbraith, whose consultancy work for DNO in 2004 has previously been revealed by DN, also received payment from DNO in 2005, “throughout the constitutional negotiations in 2005 and later.” On this aspect, Iraq’s former ambassador to the UN, Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi comments to the NYT as follows: “The idea that an oil company was participating in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution leaves me speechless”. Istrabadi emphasises that DNO in practice had “a representative in the room, drafting.”

It is often not realised how secretive and closed those final negotiations of the Iraqi constitution in August 2005 really were. A good description has been offered by Jonathan Morrow of the USIP:

“After August 8, constitutional negotiations took place in a series of private, ad hoc meetings between Kurdish and Shiite party leaders – the “Leadership Council,” as it was termed by the international press, or more informally by Committee members, “the kitchen” (matbakh). In its basic form, the Leadership Council consisted of SCIRI leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Shiite Dawa party leader Prime Minister Jaafari, Kurdish PUK party leader President Jalal Talabani, and Kurdish KDP party leader Masoud Barzani. These meetings took place at irregular intervals at a number of private residences and compounds in the International Zone. These were meetings at which the Sunni Committee members had no right of attendance, to which they frequently requested attendance, but were not often invited. The expectation was quite clear: the Shiite and Kurdish parties would agree to a constitutional text, which would then be presented as a fait accompli to the Sunni Arabs, who would be asked to take it or leave it.”

Someone who was admitted to these meetings, however, was Peter Galbraith, the paid DNO consultant and stake-holder in the Tawke oilfield. Again, according to Morrow, “the Kurdish parties were able to invite into the ad hoc meetings experienced non-Iraqi international negotiators and constitutional lawyers, including former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith and University of Maryland Professor Karol Soltan, to advance the Kurdish case.”

It seems Galbraith was doing more than just “advancing the Kurdish case”: The Iraqi constitution adopted in October 2005 for the first time establishes a regional role in administering the country’s oil sector, more or less on the lines advocated by Galbraith in a policy paper from early 2004. It is noteworthy that the KDP draft constitution for Iraq from 2003, by way of contrast, accorded exclusive sovereignty to Baghdad in administering the oil sector. Today’s revelation that Galbraith also received payment from DNO, a foreign oil company, when he was sitting in on those sensitive Iraqi constitutional meetings in August 2005 where the regional role in the oil sector was established, takes the whole Tawke-gate affair to unprecedented levels of scandalousness.

Turkmen Speaker in Al-Jazeera "Inside Iraq" Programme

Turkmen Speaker in Al Jazeera

Turkmen opinion on the latest Election Law in Iraq will be explained by Orhan Kettaneh from Istanbul in Jasim Azzawi´s “Inside Iraq” program.

Representing the Arab view will be Dr. Munthir Al-Adhami from London.


The view of the Kurds will be presented by Feryad Rawanduzi from Beirut.

The programme will be broadcast several times, so many people get a chance to see it.

Here are all timings according to GMT:

Friday

17:30 GMT (19:30 in Turkey- 20:30 in Kerkuk)

22:30 GMT (24:30 in Turkey- 1.30 in Kerkuk)

Saturday

03:00 GMT (5:00 Turkey, 6:0 Kerkuk)

08:30 GMT (10:30 Turkey, 11:30 Kerkuk)

Sunday

06:00 GMT (8:00 Turkey, 9:00 Kerkuk)

12:30 GMT (14.30 Turkey, 15:30 Kerkuk)

Monday

01:30 GMT (3:30 Turkey, 4:30 Kerkuk)

About a week after first broadcast, the show can also be viewed online on Al- Jazeera website:
www.aljazeera.net/english
(in the Programmes section)

It can be viewed also in Youtube under “Inside Iraq” title.

Disillusioned with Europe, Turkey looks East

Nostalgia for the Ottomans
Disillusioned with Europe, Turkey Looks East
11/12/2009
By Daniel Steinvorth in Istanbul

As European opposition to EU membership for Turkey grows, Ankara is looking to forge closer ties to its neighbors. Turkey wants to once again become a leading power in the Middle East -- but its relationship with Israel may suffer as a result.

He was the last heir to the throne of the Ottoman Empire, a major power that controlled large parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East for centuries. But Prince Osman Ertugrul Osmanoglu was a prince without a country, and he was stateless for much of his life. When Turkish officers proclaimed the republic in 1924, they expelled Osmanoglu and his entire family. It wasn't until 2004 that the exiled prince was granted Turkish citizenship.

The prince died in Istanbul on Sept. 23, at the age of 97, and the republic that had once banished him became reconciled with Osmanoglu. The guests at the funeral service included four cabinet ministers from the conservative Islamic AKP government, a deputy minister, several members of parliament, Istanbul's governor and the city's chief of police. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also sent his condolences -- privately. It was a rare show of republican appreciation for Turkey's Ottoman legacy.

Many Turks today believe that true greatness lies in the imperial past -- and that this past is no longer to be found exclusively in the West. Europe, with its fondness for criticizing Turkey, is increasingly become yesterday's ideal. "Neo-Ottomanism" is in vogue in Turkey, as evidenced by an exhibition at a new history museum that opened in Istanbul at the beginning of the year, a museum commission by Erdogan when he was still the mayor of Istanbul. An enormous panorama painting at the museum depicts the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453, complete with a soundtrack of cannon thunder and war cries piped through the loudspeakers.

Evoking Past Glories
This nostalgia for the Ottoman past is in keeping with an about-face in politics that is becoming increasingly obvious. Turkish politicians are now evoking -- and glorifying -- the Ottoman era as a time when their country was still a respected hegemonic power in the Middle East and Caucasus region. It is a role that Ankara wants to play again today -- perhaps one it is already playing.

Turkey has in fact turned its attention to the east once again, opening up channels of communication and embarking on an approach to diplomacy that goes beyond the usual friend vs. foe dichotomy. In short, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu hopes to solve the conflicts in the region with a "zero problems" policy. He intends to act as a mediator whenever possible, and he hopes that by the end of a reconciliation process with its neighbors, Turkey will emerge as the strongest nation in the Middle East, both economically and politically.

The initiatives have been coming hard and fast. In early October, the foreign ministers of Turkey and Armenia signed a protocol on the establishment of diplomatic relations. However, the two archenemies will have to first overcome substantial obstacles. Turkey's "brother" nation, Azerbaijan, is threatening to block the peace process unless Armenia relinquishes control over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. Armenians living abroad, in particular, insist that Ankara must first recognize the Armenian genocide during World War I before the borders are opened. Despite these obstacles, Turkey and Armenia want to continue negotiating.

Ankara has also recently begun talks with another difficult neighbor. The de facto Kurdish state in northern Iraq -- a safe haven for Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels and long the principal adversary of the Turkish military -- is worried about being left alone with Shiite and Sunni Arabs in a disintegrating Iraq. Instead, Iraq's Kurds have sought to establish ties with Turkey.

Two weeks ago, Davutoglu flew to Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, where he announced Turkey's plans to open a consulate. A journalist traveling with Davutoglu said she was astonished to see a Turkish foreign minister sitting in a limousine flying a Kurdish pennant, and that it upends everything that was official Turkish policy in the past.

Opening the Border

So far, however, the neighbors with whom the Turks have formed their closest ties are the Syrians.

In mid-October, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem met Davutoglu and his large entourage at Oncupinar on the Turkish-Syrian border. The two men cheerfully pushed aside a barrier marking the border, in a scene meant to emulate the opening of the Hungarian-Austrian border in September 1989.

In the late 1990s, the two countries were still on the verge of war, because of Syria's support for the PKK extremists. Today their armed forces conduct joint maneuvers, while their foreign and defense ministers meet as part of a "strategic cooperation council." As journalist Zeynep Gurcanli wrote in the influential Turkish daily Hürriyet, Turkey has never cooperated this closely with any other country. Could Ankara's current efforts eventually lead to a "Middle Eastern Union" modeled after the European Union?

The end of the decades-long dispute between Turkey and Syria is seen as a true success for Davutoglu -- and for the Syrians, who are overjoyed at the upgrading of their country after being ostracized in the West. But Damascus is also pleased for another reason. At almost exactly the same time as the Turkish-Syria rapprochement was happening, Turkey's relations with another country suddenly went into a nosedive.

For "technical reasons," as the Turkish government initially claimed, Turkey decided to exclude Israel from its international military exercise "Anatolian Eagle." Erdogan later explained the real reasons for the decision: Ankara could not allow fighter jets that had also been used in missions against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to fly over Turkish airspace. The Turks' decision to conduct joint military exercises with the Syrians while putting their often-cited "strategic partnership" with Israel on ice shows how deep the shift in Ankara's foreign policy already is.
It also reflects a domestic idiosyncrasy: Because the conservative Islamic AKP government has strengthened its positive relative to the secular military, it can now conduct a more self-confident foreign policy. It no longer needs to show so much respect for the Turkish-Israeli alliance, which in reality was always a project of the elite.

Displays of Displeasure

However, Ankara's spat with Israel had already begun before the Gaza war that so outraged the Turkish public. The army, too, is upset with Israel, says Haldun Solmazturk, a retired Turkish general, because there have been no reliable agreements with the Israelis for a long time, and because the Turks feel that the Israelis have treated them condescendingly.

The Israelis' Gaza offensive was the straw that broke the camel's back, triggering a display of displeasure with Israel from the Turkish side. During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in early 2009, Erdogan vented his anger on Israeli President Shimon Peres. His rant brought him fresh popularity at home and in the Arab world, where he has since been called the "Conqueror of Davos."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now considers the Turkish prime minister a good friend, and the feeling -- to the West's chagrin -- is mutual. The government in Tehran is being treated unfairly, Erdogan said before his most recent state visit to the Islamic Republic. The West, according to Erdogan, ought to give up its own nuclear weapons because threatening Iran with sanctions.

Western diplomats could hardly believe their ears. Was the only Muslim member of NATO siding with Tehran in the dispute over Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions? Wasn't this -- especially after Erdogan's anti-Israeli tirade -- even more evidence that Europe had in fact already lost Turkey, and that Ankara is looking to the east instead?

Erdogan's chief foreign policy adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, finds such charges peculiar. Even the West, he says, is not unfamiliar with the concept of pragmatic, interest-based politics. "When the Americans open up to Russia, it's hailed as a new era in diplomacy," he says. "But when Turkey opens up to Iran, people ask themselves whether we are changing our axis." Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad paid a second visit to Istanbul last Sunday, where he attended a summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Another summit guest, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has been condemned by the international community over war crimes in Darfur, did not attend, even though he had been expressly invited by the Turks. "A Muslim cannot commit genocide," Erdogan had earlier said, dumbfounding the West once again.

A Benefit for Europe

Turkish Minister for EU Affairs Egemen Bagis is nonetheless unwilling to concede that Turkey is turning away from the West. He insists that the successes of Ankara's diplomacy with the East should be seen as a benefit for Europe.

The West, says Bagis, consistently describes Turkey as a bridge between East and West. But how, he asks, can a bridge stand on only one strong pillar?

"The good news is that Turkey is not turning away from the West," says Burak Bekdil, a critic of Erdogan. "The bad news is that it isn't turning toward the West any more, either."

But should this come as a surprise? The French and Austrian governments are firmly opposed to Turkey's bid to join the EU. Meanwhile in Germany the majority of people are disillusioned with EU expansion.

In Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the image of the bridge is even seen as an expression of distance. If it were to become a full-fledged EU member, says new Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, Turkey could no longer perform the function of a bridge. After all, he said, a bridge doesn't belong to either side.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan


URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,660635,00.html

UN calls organizing Iraq elections a "Herculean task"

The UN special representative Iraq elections must be credible and held on time.
By Jane Arraf Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the November 11, 2009 edition

Baghdad - The United Nations special representative to Iraq appealed on Tuesday to Iraqi officials to meet a series of deadlines in what he called the "Herculean task" of holding national elections in a little more than two months.

"Now there are less than 10 weeks available to organize these elections, which is truly a Herculean task," Ad Melkert told a news conference at the Independent High Election Commission (IHEC). "I hope everyone is aware IHEC is under tremendous pressure to deliver credible elections in a very short period of time."

The Iraqi parliament pushed a final deadline to the brink last week, passing an election law after weeks of negotiations that will allow parliamentary elections to be held in January as mandated by the Iraqi constitution.

Mr Melkert said officials were considering holding the poll on Jan. 18 to ensure it took place before the start of 40 days of mourning observed by Shiite Muslims to commemorate the killing of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad. Advance voting for Iraqi security forces, who will be out in full force on election day, is expected to be held on Jan. 15.

The vote will be the first national election since the US handed over control of security here to Iraq with the passage of a bilateral security agreement late last year.

Political coalitions have until Friday to register and individual candidates until Nov. 16, election officials said.

In what is shaping up to be one of the most logistically complicated polls overseen by the UN, Melkert also urged patience in awaiting the final election results. Iraqi politicians passed an election law only after agreeing to a complicated formula for voting in Kirkuk and other areas claimed by Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen. In addition, there are new formulas for determining what percentage of the vote is needed for candidates to be awarded one of the 323 seats in parliament.

Nineteen million Iraqis are eligible to vote this time, including three million citizens who were too young to take part in 2005 parliamentary elections. It's expected to take days to count the ballots from the 52,000 polling stations across Iraq.

"Every time there is a strong learning process from a previous occasion and some things are in better place than they were before, at the same time the law has changed in a number of ways and time is very, very short," says Melkert, a former member of parliament in the Netherlands.

Melkert, standing next to senior IHEC officials, also urged the current Iraqi parliament to hold off on any calls for change in the election body until after the election – a reference to a parliamentary inquiry called to investigate charges of corruption.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1111/p06s09-wome.html