Bush says Iraq must stick to election schedule

WASHINGTON – President Bush on Thursday flatly ruled out any delay in Iraqi elections scheduled for Jan. 30 despite the unrelenting insurgency, rejecting Sunni Muslim boycott threats and casting the vote as a critical step toward bringing U.S. troops home.

In his strongest reaffirmation of the election plan, Bush attempted to end any doubt about whether the vote would go forward after days of debate among Iraqi politicians. Organizations representing the once-powerful Sunni minority have demanded the elections be put off until security is restored, while leaders of the majority Shiites have insisted the balloting proceed.

“The elections should not be postponed,” Bush said. “It’s time for the Iraqi citizens to go to the polls. And that’s why we are very firm on the January 30th date.”

Bush acknowledged that the precarious security environment had prompted him to approve Pentagon plans to increase the U.S. troop presence to 150,000 until after the elections. But he promised that “at some point in time, when Iraq is able to defend itself against the terrorists who are trying to destroy democracy – as I have said many times – our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.”

Speaking to reporters alongside visiting Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, Bush weighed in again on the political crisis in Ukraine, insisting that any fresh elections be “free from any foreign influence,” an implicit warning to Russia. And on another brewing international dispute, Bush declined to say whether he thought U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan should resign because of an investigation into fraud in the U.N. oil-for-food program that managed sanctions against Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s government.

The Iraqi election schedule has dominated the dialogue in Baghdad in recent days as leaders of the Sunni community, which exercised power under Saddam disproportionate to its 20 percent share of the population, warned they would sit out elections in January that they would almost certainly lose. The Sunnis demanded a delay as long as six months, citing the instability fueled by a Sunni-dominated resistance.

Shiite political leaders and their religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, rejected the demand, and Iraq’s interim President Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Muslim tribal sheik, agreed Wednesday that the election will be held as planned. Many Shiites see the elections as a chance to finally assume power in a country where they have been largely shut out despite their greater numbers.

Bush said last week that he “would hope they would go forward in January,” but Thursday’s statement made clear he would brook no delay. Analysts said the Bush administration needs the elections for a 275-member National Assembly to be conducted on schedule to secure the legitimacy for a new Iraqi government, particularly in the eyes of the Shiites.

“The thing that has kept the Shias out in the country quiet is that there would be an election by January,” said Henri Barkey, a former Clinton State Department official now teaching at Lehigh University. “Any backing off from that date would be seen as abandonment.”

Any delay, he added, would be considered caving in to the insurgents and encourage further violence. “Not having elections would be taking the lid off the powder keg … and anything can happen after that.”

Bush expressed hope that the elections would represent a defining turn for Iraq. “It’s one of those moments in history,” he said, “where a lot of people will be amazed that a society has been transformed so quickly from one of tyranny and torture and mass graves to one in which people are actually allowed to express themselves at the ballot” box.

Under the plan adopted by the Iraqi election commission, the National Assembly chosen in January would then select a new government and draft a constitution.