UN: The UN expressed concern yesterday over the legality of this month's Iraq referendum after Sunnis accused the Kurds and Shias of attempting to rig the outcome. The UN said it expected the Iraqi parliament to review the referendum rules.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, said that last-minute changes to the electoral law that were agreed by the Iraqi assembly members on Sunday did not meet international standards.
He added that UN officials had met Iraqi officials, and the changes were under review. Sunni leaders threatened to boycott the referendum, which is scheduled for October 15th, unless the changes were reversed.
Voters are being asked to decide on a constitution which, if accepted, would be followed by elections in December.
The US and Britain hope that this would provide the long-awaited watershed that would see a reduction in violence and allow them to begin troop withdrawals.
The Sunnis are generally opposed to the constitution, unlike the Shias and the Kurds, but to defeat it they would need to achieve a two-thirds majority in at least three provinces. Western diplomats have confidently predicted for weeks that the Sunnis would be unable to achieve this.
In order to make sure of victory, Kurds and Shias, who form a majority in Iraq, changed the electoral law so that such a veto would require two-thirds of the registered voters in the three provinces rather than just two-thirds of those who vote.
But in the same sentence the Kurds and Shias decided that, for the constitution to pass, only two-thirds of those who vote rather than those who are registered will be sufficient.
Jose Aranaz, a legal adviser to the UN electoral team that has been advising the Iraqi government, said: "We have expressed our position to the national assembly and to the leadership of the government and told them that the decision that was taken was not acceptable and would not meet international standards. Hopefully by tomorrow the situation will be clarified."
Mr Aranaz said the assembly had effectively defined "voter" in different ways in the same sentence. "They cannot have a double interpretation in the same sentence," he said. "The interpretation, which we asked for two and a half months ago, came late and it came wrong."
A UN source said the change had not been instigated by the US, which was apparently concerned at the switch, but by the Iraqi assembly members.
The sectarian rift is making waves across the Sunni-ruled Arab world. Iraq's Shia interior minister, who dismissed a Saudi minister as a "bedouin riding a camel", returned to the charge yesterday, lambasting the birthplace of Islam for treating Shias as "second-class citizens".
About 2,500 US troops, along with Iraqi forces, yesterday launched their second major offensive in western Iraq in a week to recover three towns that fell to the insurgents last month. The US military announced its first casualties of the offensives, with four killed by roadside bombs during the fighting and a fifth elsewhere.
US Marines opened their biggest offensive this year against al-Qaeda guerrillas in western Iraq, the military saying 2,500 troops attacked militants around Haditha. Two months after the last push against Islamist fighters ended with al-Qaeda still in control, to the dismay of locals alarmed by its Taliban-style rule over civilians, Operation River Gate aims to stop the group operating in Haditha and two nearby towns, Haqlaniya and Barwana. - (Guardian Service)