Turnout high for Sunnis

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Voters in Iraq's three Sunni-majority provinces turned out in markedly higher numbers for Saturday's constitutional referendum than they did in January's parliamentary elections, American and Iraqi officials said Thursday.

The high turnout figures, if they hold, represent the first evidence that Iraq's Sunni Muslims, whose community forms the heart of the guerrilla insurgency, had decided to join the budding Iraqi political process in substantial numbers, even if only to vote against the constitution. In January, they largely boycotted the balloting.

Turnout among registered voters reached 88 percent in Salahuddin province, the birthplace of the deposed Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, and 58 percent in Ninevah, a Sunni-majority province that has been torn by violence, according to statistics released by the Independent Election Commission of Iraq.

The turnout in Salahuddin province was the second-highest in the country, behind only Kurdish-dominated Erbil.

Turnout in the January elections was about 29 and 17 percent in Salahuddin and Ninevah provinces, respectively.

In Anbar Province, the other big Sunni province, turnout reached 30 percent on Saturday, according to Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the American military here. If true, that would represent a 15-fold increase over the January elections, when only about 2 percent of registered voters cast ballots.

Iraqi and American officials have long hoped that the Sunni minority would turn away from violence as the democratic process offered a means to political power. But until now, there has been little evidence that anything like that was happening, as attacks have continued at a relatively steady pace for much of the past year.

A civilian official in Baghdad with knowledge of the election returns expressed skepticism of the American military's predictions for Anbar Province, saying the Iraqi election commission had not come up with its own figures yet.

In his briefing on Thursday, Lynch attributed the surge in turnout to the relatively low level of violence on voting day. The calm, Lynch said, was due in no small part to the vigilance of American and Iraqi security forces, who were deployed across the country.

The election official in Baghdad cautioned that turnout numbers could change as the vote counting continues. Iraqi officials are scrutinizing the balloting because of what they described as "unusually high" vote totals in favor of the constitution in 12 provinces dominated by Shiites and Kurds. Some Sunni leaders say the elections were marred by widespread fraud.