Iraqi premier certain boycott will be minor

BAGHDAD — Iraq's interim prime minister said Monday he's confident only a small number of people will boycott the Jan. 30 elections despite anger among many Sunni Muslims over the Fallujah offensive and a deadly U.S.-Iraqi raid on a Baghdad mosque.

"The forces of darkness and terrorism will not benefit from this democratic experience and will fight it," Ayad Allawi told The Associated Press. "But we are determined that this experiment succeeds."

Allawi spoke as violence raged in the capital and other cities, and the U.S. Embassy said a bomb was discovered Monday on a commercial flight inside Iraq. Gunmen in the north assassinated a prominent election opponent, and five decapitated bodies were discovered south of the capital.

Despite the violence, the Iraqi government Sunday set Jan. 30 as the date for parliamentary elections, the first since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Officials said the balloting would be held even in areas still plagued by insurgency and despite calls by militant Sunni clerics for a boycott.

However, Allawi, a secular Shiite hand-picked by the Americans last June, said he believed that only "a very small minority" would abstain during the election "for one reason or another."

"Their reason will be political, and not sectarian, and they will not be more than 5, 6 or 7 percent," Allawi said in his office in the U.S.-guarded Green Zone. "They are the eventual losers."

Allawi is expected to run for a seat in the assembly, which would then choose the government.

The United States is anxious that the election go ahead as planned, hoping that an elected government widely accepted by the Iraqi people will take the steam out of the insurgency still raging in Sunni areas of central, western and northern Iraq as well as the capital.

As the election approaches, U.S. commanders in Iraq probably will expand their troops by several thousand. Army units slated to depart are also being held back until after the election. There now are about 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

U.S. officials are concerned that a boycott could deprive the new government of legitimacy in the eyes of the Sunni Arabs, who make up an estimated 20 percent of the nearly 26 million population. The majority Shiites, believed to form 60 percent of the population, strongly support elections.