IRAQ: Iraq is to close all its land borders for three days ahead of the January 30th elections in a series of draconian measures announced yesterday by election officials hoping to curb violence on polling day.
Other measures include a three day public holiday, a ban on driving without an official permit during voting and the extension of existing night-time curfews.
US and Iraqi officials warn that polling day is likely to see a dramatic increase in attacks by Sunni insurgents bent on disrupting the election.
Insurgents are already conducting a ferocious campaign of intimidation and attacks on those taking parting the poll. Yesterday a car bomb outside offices of the country's largest Shia party killed three, and an election candidate was murdered in Basra.
Militants also threatened to kill eight Chinese hostages within 48 hours, although in the northern city of Mosul kidnappers freed the Catholic Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa a day after his capture.
Iraqi Interior Minister Mr Falah Naqib warned that the country risked sliding into civil war unless the minority Sunni Muslims stopped their attacks and agreed to take part in the January 30th elections.
"Failing to take part in the elections is tantamount to treason and will lead to a civil war and the division of the country," the Minister told reporters.
The main Sunni religious faction, the Islamic Party, has withdrawn its candidates and called for a postponement amid fears that sabotage threats from militants will scare the community away from voting. The Iraqi government insists the elections must go ahead and that a delay would mean giving in to the insurgents.
The new security measures announced yesterday are unlikely to prevent insurgents from carrying out attacks. Iraq's long and porous borders have proved impossible to police in the past, and Iraqi security officials fear that many insurgents are already in the country.
The Vatican yesterday said no ransom was paid to secure the freedom of Archbishop Casmoussa. The archbishop was silent about his kidnappers and called his ordeal a mistake.
"Thank God for everything. The whole operation was unintentional because I was released in less than 24 hours. The kidnappers knew that I wasn't the one they wanted," he said.
Meanwhile, the Chinese state news agency, Xinhua, said Chinese diplomats in Iraq were working to free the construction workers, who had gone missing last week. It gave no details of the men's work but quoted sources as saying their building project had no link to US-led multinational forces in Iraq. - (Additional reporting by Reuters)