By Andrew Quinn
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq’s major political parties finalised alliances on Saturday ahead of December 15 polls that will select the first full four-year parliament since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein.
Shi’ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish blocs were among more than 200 parties and coalitions that completed registration for the election, which Washington hopes will cement Iraqi democracy and open the way for an eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops.
After a week which saw the United States mark the 2,000th U.S. military fatality in Iraq, U.S. forces announced the deaths of three more soldiers, bringing the total American death toll since the U.S.-led invasion to at least 2,013.
The military also said a U.S. soldier had shot dead the driver of a truck used in Monday’s bombing of a Baghdad hotel complex, stopping the vehicle from getting closer to the building and preventing an even bigger disaster.
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Election officials said on Saturday that 21 coalitions and 230 political parties and entities registered for the December election by Friday’s deadline, including a significant number of Sunni Arab groups who boycotted the last election in January.
Five groups are likely to dominate the race: the Shi’ite Islamist Alliance, the Kurdish bloc, at least two blocs of Sunni Arab parties and a secular coalition unveiled on Saturday by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Washington hopes the participation of Sunni parties will bring more Sunnis into the political fold, although it remains unclear how much sway Sunni party leaders have over militants fighting the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad.
COMPLICATED BALLOTS
Under a new system of proportional representation, voters in Iraq’s 18 provinces will see 18 different ballot papers.
"We are giving the voter a chance to elect people they know so that people will get more involved in the candidate’s programme for his province," Hussein Hindawi, the head of Iraq’s election commission, told Reuters.
Some groups such the Kerbala Coalition may only field candidates in their home bases, while others such as Allawi’s list are expected to seek support across the country.
Allawi, a secular Shi’ite, unveiled a slate on Saturday that included prominent Sunnis such as Vice-President Ghazi al-Yawar, parliamentary speaker Hajem al-Hassani and Adnan Pachachi.
"The first priority of our list is the national unity of Iraq, which is the most important issue for the future," Allawi said on Saturday. "The second priority is securing, in deeds not words, public services and security for the people."
While many observers expect the December election to be fought along ethnic and sectarian lines, growing dissatisfaction with service delivery by the current Shi’ite- and Kurdish-led government may also play an important role.
The most prominent Shi’ite faction, the United Alliance led by Shi’ite Islamist parties, took more than half the 275 seats in parliament in the January election.
"This coalition represents a big, wide and important popular base within Iraqi people, so this coalition will form, with God’s help, the biggest bloc in the coming parliament," Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim told a news conference on Saturday.
But while it has largely reformed to contest the December election, the United Alliance has lost several components, including the Iraqi National Congress led by Ahmed Chalabi, a controversial politician who fell out of favour with Washington.
The barometer of the election may be the ethnically and religiously mixed capital city, Baghdad, where the parties will contest 59 of the 230 seats allocated to the provinces. Another 45 seats will be allocated according to national vote tallies in a measure aimed at ensuring smaller parties’ representation.
MORE DEATHS
The U.S. military announced the deaths of three more soldiers on Saturday: two killed by a roadside bomb in south Baghdad and a third by a landmine in Baiji, 180 km (110 miles) north of the capital.
Militants staged a dramatic attack last Monday, sending explosives-laden vehicles ramming into the perimeter walls of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel, the base for several Western media organisations in the city.
The strike was televised around the world and killed at least 15 people. But the U.S. military said on Saturday that more deaths had been averted by the actions of a U.S. soldier who killed the driver of the last truck before it could detonate closer to the building.
A military news release said the bomb attack was co-ordinated with small-arms fire and possible rocket-propelled grenade attacks from accomplices, although it played down suggestions that insurgents wanted to kidnap foreign journalists.
"I don’t think capturing journalists was the goal," it quoted Capt. John Newman as saying. "They were just trying to cause death and destruction, and get on the news."
(Additional reporting by Claudia Parsons, Mariam Karouny, Azeel Kami and Ahmed Rashid)
