Iraqis vote by the millions

BAGHDAD -- Millions of Iraqis streamed to the polls yesterday in the country's first democratic elections for a permanent legislative assembly. Turnout was especially large in Sunni areas that had witnessed anemic participation in previous balloting this year.

Iraqi officials predicted that the number of votes cast might exceed 10 million, out of 15.5 million eligible voters.

That figure easily surpassed the numbers for January's national election for a transitional assembly, and for the constitutional referendum in October.

Results were not expected to be known for two to three weeks. But Iraqi and US officials proclaimed the relatively peaceful vote a huge step toward a viable, stable Iraq.

In Ramadi and Fallujah, where the insurgency has raged since the US invasion in March 2003, officials said they had run out of ballots as turnout swelled. In the Shi'ite south, the Kurdish north, and most of the capital, Iraqis flocked to the polls as well.

''Today, democracy prevails and Iraqis are determining their fate through ballot boxes," Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari told reporters after voting in Baghdad.

In Washington, President Bush praised the election as a ''major milestone." The White House has said it hopes the vote may put Iraq on a path toward stability, and perhaps pave the way for a drawdown of the 160,000 US troops now here.

''This is a major step forward in achieving our objective," Bush said, standing with six Iraqi-Americans who displayed purple ink on their fingers, indicating that they had cast ballots in the United States this week.

Iraqi officials warned that the violence could surge anew after the election, once the tight election-day security eases. The strife, they said, might be driven by insurgents opposed to the process.

''The violence will not end after these elections because the Saddamists and Takfiris [people who consider others infidels] will continue their efforts to destroy democracy in this country," said the national security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie.

Leaders of the current regime will stay on as caretakers until a new government is formed; this could take months. US and Iraqi officials have urged the parties to try to reach agreement to prevent a power vacuum that could give momentum to the insurgency.

After January's election, it took more than three months for the three major blocs -- religious parties made up of Shi'ites and Kurds and a group of secular parties -- to negotiate the makeup of a new government.

This time around, the process will be even more complicated, as Sunnis who boycotted in January will probably have won substantial representation in yesterday's voting, perhaps equal to that of the Kurds.

After the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq certifies the vote in several weeks, the new Council of Representatives, the official name of the new assembly, will hold its first session and will select a speaker.

The assembly will then select the president, who will need the support of a two-thirds majority in the body. The president will appoint a prime minister, who will choose a Cabinet that must get the approval of an absolute majority in the assembly. The prime minister will wield the real authority.

But the biggest battle is expected to focus on the constitution. The new assembly has four months to debate changes, and the main Sunni party has vowed to pursue an overhaul of the document drafted almost entirely by Shi'ites and Kurds.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said as he cast his vote in the Kurdish mountain redoubt of Sulaimaniyah that he hoped the election would preserve the constitution that was approved by a tiny margin in October.

''I hope that the Iraqi people will stay united," Talabani said.

In polling stations, a dutiful mood prevailed. Some voters put on their best clothes; others wrapped themselves in flags; others ventured with little fanfare to the polling stations through deserted streets -- car traffic had been banned in cities -- weaving through impromptu soccer games on thoroughfares.

The biggest change in this election from earlier post-Hussein votes was the appearance of Sunnis at the polling places.

''If this election opens the way for security, it will be worth my coming today. I do not expect democracy," said Hussein Ali, a 55-year-old Sunni professor from the Baghdad neighborhood of Aadhamiya, where resistance to the US occupation runs high.

Shi'ites, most of them voting for the third time this year, said they were fulfilling their religious duty to cast ballots and expressed hope that they would consolidate the influence they won under the current, Shi'ite-dominated government.

Adil Mohammed Radhi al-Mundheri, 48, said he voted for the Shi'ite Islamist Alliance because its members had supplied the greatest number of ''martyrs" in the struggle against Saddam Hussein. The alliance controls the lion's share of ministries in the current government.

It also has used its power to push for a more Islamic legal code, for a prohibition on former Ba'ath Party members in government, and a no-holds-barred campaign against the insurgency.

''These are the ones who struggled for the people and sacrificed their families," Mundheri said, clutching yellow prayer beads in his left hand at the Al Koutha School for Girls in Kadhamiya. ''Hopefully, they will govern now for four years, and people will have to accept it as the permanent government and we will have peace."

In Kadhamiya, the center for Shi'ites in Baghdad centered on the gold-domed shrine to Imam Kadhum, Shi'ite turnout was high, most of it for the Islamist Alliance. A small fraction of voters said they had voted for other smaller religious parties.

Almost none admitted to voting for the bloc headed by the former prime minister, Iyad Allawi, who has campaigned as a nonsectarian alternative to the Shi'ite and Sunni lists.

Allawi said he had complained directly to the United Nations with allegations that the Iraqi election commission had not fairly enforced election rules during the campaign, and during yesterday's voting.

He said many members of his secular list had been murdered during the campaign, and that he had been the victim of smear tactics by the dominant Sh'ite Alliance.

Many of Iraq's major parties alleged voter fraud yesterday, and some military officers said they had been barred from voting. None of the allegations had been confirmed as of last night.

Adnan al-Dulaimi, a leading member of the main Sunni coalition, called for close scrutiny of ballot boxes during the counting process that began last night.

Polling stations in many Sunni areas were mysteriously shut or ran out of ballots, Dulaimi said.

''We are afraid there is manipulation or fraud," Dulaimi said. ''We are not afraid of other parties winning if that victory is transparent or honest.

''But if there is fraud or manipulation, we should all condemn it," Dulaimi said.

Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of Iraq's population and are concentrated in a semi-autonomous region in the north, voted in droves yesterday, largely in an effort to protect their independence from Baghdad through substantial representation in the new assembly.

''We are ready to sacrifice ourselves for this beloved land," said Surmand Karim, 22, who donned a Kurdish flag as a cape to vote for the unified Kurdish list of candidates in the village of Binaslawa, outside Erbil. ''We're very proud of being Kurd."

US troops stayed in the background, waiting in camps in case they were called on by Iraqi security forces.

An explosion in Baghdad at the beginning of voting injured two civilians and a US Marine, the military said. A mortar killed a civilian near a polling station in the northern city of Tal Afar, and a bomb killed a hospital guard in Mosul.

Globe correspondents Sa'ad al-Izzi in Baghdad, Hassan al-Jarrah in Najaf, and Yerevan Adham in Erbil contributed. Material from the Associated Press and Reuters was included.