Text 16037, 166 rader
Skriven 2005-10-25 21:32:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Iraq
============
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,173349,00.html

Iraq Constitution Passes in Referendum 
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
 
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's constitution was adopted by a majority in a fair 
vote during the Oct. 15 referendum, as Sunni Arab opponents failed to 
muster enough support to defeat it, election officials said Tuesday. A 
prominent Sunni politician called the balloting "a farce." 

The U.S. military announced a wounded soldier died Tuesday, bringing the 
number of American service members killed since the war started in 2003 
to 2,000, according to an Associated Press count.

Iraq's most feared terror group, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for 
Monday's homicide attacks that targeted hotels housing Western 
journalists and contractors in central Baghdad, as well as two bombings 
in a Kurdish area of northern Iraq on Tuesday.

The referendum results, announced after a 10-day audit following 
allegations of fraud, confirmed previous indications that Sunni Arabs 
(search) failed to produce the two-thirds "no" vote they would have 
needed in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces to defeat the 
constitution.

The charter is considered a major step in Iraq's democratic reforms, 
clearing the way for the election of a new, full-term parliament on Dec. 
15. Such steps are important in any decision about the future withdrawal 
of U.S.-led forces.

However, some fear the victory, which came despite a large turnout by 
Sunni Arabs to try to defeat it, could enrage many members of the 
minority and fuel their support for the country's Sunni-led insurgency.

Carina Perelli (search), the U.N. elections chief, praised a "very good 
job" with the audit of results by election officials and said "Iraq 
should be proud of the commission."

Iraq's top two coalition partners, the United States and Britain, also 
welcomed the results.

"It's a landmark day in the history of Iraq," White House spokesman 
Scott McClellan said. "We congratulate the Iraqi people. ... The 
political process is continuing to move forward in Iraq, and it is an 
encouraging sign to see more and more people participating in the 
process."

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Iraqis "have shown again their 
determination to defy the terrorists and take part in the democratic 
process." Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini also welcomed the 
results, saying Italy would keep supporting the political process in the 
country.

Two homicide car bombs exploded Tuesday in the generally peaceful 
Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, killing 12 people. Al Qaeda in Iraq 
claimed responsibility in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site.

The group led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi also said it was 
behind the three homicide car bombs aimed at the Palestine and Sheraton 
hotels.

It said it carried out the attack to target a "dirty harbor of 
intelligence agents and private American, British and Australian 
security companies," according to a posting on a Web site that carries 
extremist material.

In other Baghdad violence, bombings and shootings killed six people — 
including a 7-year-old boy — and wounded 45 Iraqis, mostly policemen, 
officials said.

Iraqi and U.S. forces were refortifying the hotel complex, which houses 
media offices, repairing a breach in the blast walls that surround it.

Deputy Interior Minister Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal told the AP that 17 
people were killed — mostly hotel guards and passers-by — and 10 wounded 
in the attack.

Farid Ayar, an official with the Independent Electoral Commission of 
Iraq, said the audit had turned up no significant fraud.

But Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni Arab member of the committee that drafted 
the constitution, called the referendum "a farce" and accused government 
forces of stealing ballot boxes to reduce the percentage of "no" votes 
in several mostly Sunni provinces.

"The people were shocked to find out that their vote is worthless 
because of the major fraud that takes place in Iraq," he said on Al-
Arabiya TV.

Adnan al-Dulaimi, a spokesman for the General Conference for the People 
of Iraq, a largely Sunni coalition of politicians and tribal leaders, 
said the audit took so long it left many Sunnis suspicious of possible 
fraud and manipulation. But he said his group "will work to educate 
Iraqis and get them to participate" in the December vote.

The charter was drafted after months of bitter negotiations that ended 
with some Sunni leaders agreeing to support it with provisions that 
future changes were possible.

The militants kept up their deadly attacks Tuesday.

A car bomb exploded near a government ministry that houses Kurdish 
forces known as peshmerga, on the outskirts of the predominantly Kurdish 
city of Sulaimaniyah, killing 12 people, said Lt. Col. Taha Redha, a 
peshmerga official.

About 45 minutes earlier, a suicide car bomb rammed into a convoy 
carrying Mullah Bakhtiyar, a senior Kurdish official in President Jalal 
Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, said police Col. Najim al-
Din Qader. Bakhtiyar was not hurt, but two guards were wounded.

Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad, is where the PUK party is 
based, and is considered one of the most peaceful areas of Iraq.

The U.S. military said the two Marines were killed by a roadside bomb in 
fighting with insurgents on Friday near the village of Amiriyah, 25 
miles west of Baghdad.

A video posted on an Islamic extremist Web site showed a U.S. soldier 
being shot in Iraq while guarding an armored vehicle. Although the 
militant Islamic Army in Iraq said one of its snipers killed the soldier 
in Baghdad on Monday, the military said it could not verify its 
authenticity.

"It is impossible to know at this point when and where this event 
supposedly took place," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Boylan 
said. "There have been other types of propaganda stunts pulled over time 
by insurgents that turned out to be fakes."

As the U.S. military death toll in the Iraq war nears the landmark total 
of 2,000, the Iraqi death toll is unknown, but estimates range much 
higher.

Iraq Body Count, a British research group that compiles figures from 
reports by major news agencies and British and U.S. newspapers, has said 
that as many as 30,051 Iraqis have been killed since the war began. 
Other estimates range as high as 100,000.

U.S. and coalition authorities say they have not kept a count of such 
deaths, and Iraqi government accounting has proven to be haphazard.

The vote on the constitution was 78.59 percent for ratification and 
21.41 percent against, the commission said. The charter required a 
simple majority nationwide with the provision that if two-thirds of the 
voters in any three provinces rejected it, the constitution would be 
defeated.

The election commission said the predominantly Sunni province of Ninevah 
had produced a "no" vote of 55 percent. Only two other mostly Sunni 
provinces — Salahuddin and Anbar — had voted no by two-thirds or more. 
Ninevah had been a focus of fraud allegations since preliminary results 
had showed a large majority of voters had approved the constitution, 
despite a large Sunni Arab population there.

Many Kurds and majority Shiites strongly support the constitution, but 
Sunni Arabs fear it will create two virtually autonomous and oil-rich 
mini-states of Kurds in the north and Sunnis in the south, while leaving 
many Sunnis isolated in poor central and western regions with a weak 
central government in Baghdad.

Some 9.8 million Iraqis cast ballots, or 63 percent of registered 
voters. About 60 percent turned out for January's legislative vote, 
which was boycotted by many Sunni Arabs.

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