Iraq provincial polls crucial, monitors needed
By Mohammed Abbas
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Provincial elections expected later this year could help heal Iraq's sectarian divide but finding people to monitor them will be a major hurdle, officials said on Thursday.
Parliament passed a provincial powers law on Wednesday that paves the way for local elections to be held by October 1, but a big stumbling block will be the appointment of election officers in some key governorates, the United Nations said.
"You caught us by surprise, by having such a quick decision on the date of the elections. The date of the election will now be on October 1, and we have to adjust," the U.N. envoy to Baghdad, Staffan de Mistura, told a news conference.
"For the past five months, there has been no movement, no decision whatsoever, regarding the appointment of very important positions ...the governorate electoral officers."
Iraqi officials, including Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, have said the provincial powers law calls for the elections to be held by October 1.
The polls are seen as an important step towards stability and reconciliation as minority Sunni Arabs largely boycotted provincial elections in January 2005 and are under-represented in many areas where they are numerically dominant.
But while security has improved across Iraq, bomb attacks and shootings are still a daily occurrence.
"We think that the provincial governments are the true guarantee of well being of the new Iraqi order," Mashhadani said at the news conference.
Mistura said the United Nations, which has a mandate to observe the elections to ensure transparency, had begun a high profile advertising campaign to find eight governorate electoral officers, in a process scheduled to take 43 days.
The provincial powers law defines ties between the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad and local authorities and is seen as a key step before provincial elections can take place.
Attacks have fallen across Iraq by 60 percent since last June, when 30,000 additional U.S. troops became fully deployed.
U.S. force levels have begun to drop because of the gains, but the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said on Monday holding provincial polls might justify keeping higher numbers of U.S. forces here for slightly longer to help with voter security.
Five extra combat brigades brought in last year as part of U.S. President George W. Bush's "surge" policy are scheduled to depart by mid-year. Around 155,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday after meeting Petraeus in Baghdad that he backed a brief pause in U.S. troop cuts once the initial pullout has been completed.
(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami; Editing by Diana Abdallah)