Iraq borders to be sealed before vote

BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi government plans to seal the country's borders for the last three days of this month to prevent attacks aimed at disrupting the Jan. 30 elections, the Independent Electoral Commission declared yesterday. Officials reported that two candidates for the National Assembly were gunned down in separate attacks, and a suicide car bomb killed two people and wounded six others outside an office of a leading Shi'ite Muslim political party.

In Baghdad, masked gunmen shot and killed Shaker Jabbar Sahl, 48, a Shi'ite who was running on a ticket led by a cousin of Iraq's last king. News reports said Alaa Hamid, deputy chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee in the southern city of Basra and a National Assembly candidate for the Iraqi National Accord coalition, was shot to death Monday in front of his family. Another candidate in a race for Basra's provincial council also was reported killed when his car came under fire.

In another apparent election-related attack yesterday, a car bomb exploded outside an office of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a major Shi'ite party. Two Iraqis were killed and six more hurt, Iraqi police said.

The violence continued this morning, but the targets shifted. A pair of vehicle bombs, minutes apart, exploded outside the Australian Embassy and police headquarters in Baghdad, police said. At least six people were killed outside the headquarters and two outside the embassy.

According to an Iraqi guard at the Australian ambassador's residence, a man drove a truck cab, without a trailer, to the cement barriers in front of the embassy, then fled in another car that was waiting for him before the blast. An Australian official said no one was injured inside, although the windows were blown out.

The second blast was from a car bomb that targeted a police station in Baghdad's eastern Elwiyah neighborhood, the Interior Ministry official said.

The US military said yesterday that three US troops were killed Monday in an attack in Anbar Province, where the insurgent strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi are located.

In the northern city of Mosul, another center of insurgent activity, kidnappers released the Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, the Syrian Catholic leader who was seized Monday near his church in the city. Casmoussa was unharmed, and told Vatican Radio that he did not believe his capture was an attack on the church.

But a videotape delivered to several news organizations appeared to show a fresh seizure of foreigners accused of working with US forces. The video showed eight Chinese men held captive; a handwritten note that accompanied it said they were working on US construction projects in Iraq, the Associated Press reported.

The elections commission announced that only Muslim pilgrims returning from the annual journey to Mecca would be allowed to cross the border between Jan. 29 and 31. That is the latest addition to a list of strict measures that will include a three-day ban on travel between provinces and an extension of nighttime curfews across the country -- and, possibly, banning all private vehicles from the roads. The commission gave no explanation of how the government would more effectively seal the borders.

Iraqis have said since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003 that US and Iraqi forces have let the country's borders become too porous, allowing criminals, weapons, and young men eager to wage holy war to enter Iraq from neighboring countries.

Guaranteeing security for Iraq's first competitive elections in decades is the most urgent task for the government of US-backed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the 150,000 US troops that back it. A successful transition from the current appointed government to an elected one is a crucial step toward building a state that is legitimate in Iraqi eyes, US Ambassador John Negroponte said yesterday.

But Negroponte admitted that a strong insurgency had made the task more difficult. "This ruthless campaign of terror and intimidation is taking its toll," he said.

Allawi spoke to President Bush by telephone about preparations for the elections.

"We want to make sure that the Iraqis have the best possible election, that as many people in Iraq who want to are able to participate in the election process," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Prime Minister Allawi has been doing a lot of outreach to sectors throughout the country to encourage broad participation in the elections, and the fact that we're moving forward on elections is a significant achievement."

If violence keeps large numbers of voters away from the polls, especially in Sunni Muslim areas where anger at the US presence and support for the insurgency run deepest, divisions between the Sunni minority and Shi'ite majority could widen dangerously.

The depth of the Iraqi government's anxiety over turnout was on display at a news conference yesterday where Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib used strong words to urge Iraqis to vote.

"Not participating in the elections is treason against Iraq," he admonished. "If we do not have elections, there will be civil war. . . . Boycotting the elections will not produce a National Assembly that represents the Iraqi people."

But even some members of Allawi's slate predict that Sunnis will stay away from the polls and not accept the resulting 275-member national legislature, which will choose a new president and prime minister and write the country's new constitution.

"We want to delay the election," said Mohsin al-Faisal, a tribal leader from Mosul who is the 23d candidate on Allawi's slate. Voters must choose from among lists of candidates, who will receive seats proportionally.

"We don't want to have an election where 30 or 35 percent of the people vote," Faisal said. "It's not democracy."

US officials have reached out to a leading Sunni group that backs the boycott and is believed to have contact with elements of the insurgency, Negroponte acknowledged.

US Deputy Chief of Mission James Jeffrey met last week with leaders of the Association of Muslim Clerics, the ambassador said. The clerics' group has demanded that the US set a timetable for withdrawal as a condition for endorsing the elections.

"It wasn't a negotiating session, it wasn't any discussion of quid pro quo," Negroponte said of the meeting, adding that Jeffrey stressed to the group that participation would win the group clout in the political process.

But Negroponte noted that the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the US presence requires the United States to pull out if asked by an Iraqi government.

"If that is the wish of the Iraqi government, we will abide by those wishes," he said.

Even the most prominent parties -- Allawi and the Shi'ite religious parties led by Abdulaziz al-Hakim, the brother of a respected Shi'ite cleric slain in a suicide bombing in 2003 -- have called in their platforms for a more specific timetable for the US departure.

Globe correspondent Sa'ad al-Izzi contributed to this report. Material from the Associated Press was also used.