Iraqi elections may be delayed

by Jamal Hashim

BAGHDAD, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iraq's January parliamentary elections may be delayed to late February due to disputes among political parties over an election law, threatening the U.S. plans to withdraw its combat troops from the war-torn country in August 2010.

For months the Iraqi lawmakers have been struggling to pass the amendments needed to the law in an attempt to reform the elections process to make it more representative for Iraqis inside and outside the country.

A parliamentary source, who refused to be named, told Xinhua that leaders of several political factions met late on Wednesday at the house of the former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to discuss the political impasse and that another meeting is planned Thursday to find a way out of the deadlock.

"The meeting discussed how to reach a consensus over the election law, and some proposals were made during the meeting," the source said.

For his part, Allawi told Arabiyah satellite channel that various political blocs proposed to move the date of the country's elections to Feb. 27, or even March 1.

Hadi al-Ameri, a key Shiite lawmaker, told reporters after the meeting that he is optimistic that the Iraqi politicians will overcome the obstacles as they all agree on the necessity of holding the elections before the expire of the current parliament mandate due on March 16, 2010.

"There was an agreement among the politicians in the meeting that seats for the provinces would remain as it is before the veto to the election law by Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, but the Kurds would be granted two more seats and then number of parliament seats will increase to 325 instead of 323," Ameri said.

On Nov. 18, Hashimi vetoed the controversial election law, demanding more seats in the next parliament for Iraqis living abroad among whom most are Sunni Arab Muslims.

The vetoed elections law stated that 323 parliamentary seats would represent Iraqi people instead of the current 275 seats in the current parliament.

As part of the political struggle among Iraqi factions, Hashimi's veto actually meant to amend part of the elections law, but the veto led to a political crisis when the lawmakers responded by changing other articles of the law which led to increase the number of seats allocated to the Kurdish provinces and reduce the seats allocated to the Arab provinces, particularly, the Sunni ones.