Iraqis abroad begin voting in homeland's election

[March 05, 2010]  DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- Iraqis living abroad began casting ballots in their homeland's crucial parliamentary elections Friday, a constituency Iraq's Sunni Arab minority hope will boost their showing.

Thousands stood in lines at polling stations in Syria and Jordan, home to the largest Iraqi expatriate communities. Voting was also being held in more than a dozen other countries around the world, from Australia to the United States.

The United Nations refugee agency estimates that around 2 million Iraqis are living abroad -- the majority of whom fled violence following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

A large proportion of those -- particularly in Jordan and Syria -- are Sunni Arabs who fled the fierce wave of sectarian killings at the height of the Iraq war.

That has made their votes a major focus of attention for Sunni leaders in Iraq, who are hoping a strong turnout among their community will counterbalance a strong vote among the Shiite majority for their own religious parties.

Voting abroad will be held for three days, while in Iraq most voters go to the polls on Sunday, choosing a 325-seat legislature. The largest bloc in parliament will try to put together a government to lead Iraq for four key years as U.S. troops withdraw.

In Jordan, a Sunni tribal leader from the western Iraqi province of Anbar, Saad Al-Hardan, warned that after the Americans leave, Iran will try to dominate Iraq -- a common fear among Sunnis because of the deep ties between Iraqi Shiite parties and Tehran.

"The U.S. occupation will end, but the Iranian one is there to stay. The Iranian influence is significant in parliament and in the government," he said.

Many of those voting in Jordan said they wanted liberal and secular politicians to take over from Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who many Sunni Muslims accuse of isolating Sunnis and giving Iran the upper hand in Iraq.

Al-Maliki's government "hasn't done anything for Iraq," said Samir al-Abdali, 56, who along with his wife and daughter was among the first to vote at a polling station at a cultural center in Damascus, one of 23 stations around the country.

He said he voted for Iraqiya, a secular list that includes both Shiites and Sunnis. Among its leaders are Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite.

In Amman, Amal Janabi, a 39-year-old Sunni who worked at Iraq's agriculture ministry for seven years until she fled to Jordan after the invasion, said she too voted for Allawi's Iraqiya.

"He's a secular leader and his list comprises all Iraqi sects," said Janabi, in a Western-style black suit and a conservative Muslim headscarf. "He will be able to cut across the sectarian divide and restore peace and security in Iraq."

Syria has nearly 800,000 Iraqi refugees, while Jordan's community is estimated as high as 500,000, according to the UNHCR.

"The turnout is pretty good," the head of the Iraqi election commission in Amman, Nehad Abbas told The Associated Press.

Around 1,000 Iraqi expatriates crammed one balloting station in Amman in an hour early Friday, Abbas said, adding that he expects around 180,000 Iraqis in Jordan to cast their ballot.

Voting seemed slower in Lebanon, home to a much smaller community of around 50,000 Iraqis. At one station in Beirut's commercial Hamra street, voters were coming at an average of about every 15 minutes.

The issue of out-of-country voting nearly derailed the election when al-Hashemi vetoed an early version of the election law because he said it did not treat votes by Iraqis living abroad as equal to those within the country. The issue was eventually resolved but highlighted just how important Sunnis view the expatriate voting.

Earlier this week, al-Hashemi met with Syria's president in Damascus in what doubled as a campaign stop, meeting members of the Iraqi community in the country.

During a Baghdad news conference earlier this week, the U.N.'s representative in Iraq, Ad Melkert, sought to dampen expectations about a large turnout abroad.

He noted that not only do Iraqis have to document their Iraqi nationality but they also have to document the province they come from -- a potentially harder task for people who fled their homeland, sometimes without all of their belongings.

Among the refugee communities in Syria and Lebanon are known to be some prominent tribal sheiks once accused of aiding Iraq's bloody insurgency and members of Saddam's dissolved Baath party.

Zuhair Abdullah, a former Baathist now in Syria, blasted the elections as "illegal and illegitimate because they are conducted under the U.S. occupation." Still, he said he would participate to support what he called "nationalists" over the "sectarians".

Voting is also starting Friday in the United States, Canada, Australia, Austria, Sweden, Germany, Britain, Denmark, Holland, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Turkey.

[Associated Press; By ALBERT AJI]

Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Baghdad and Jamal Halaby and Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan contributed to this report.

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