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Friday, Jan. 28, 2005

Only about a quarter of the more than 1 million Iraqis eligible in 14 countries have registered to vote, but most of those who signed up were expected to cast ballots - and those who appeared at the polls Friday were elated at the opportunity.

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"It's a very happy day for me, I am happier than on my wedding day," said Saja Verdi, 26, an unemployed mother of two, at a polling station in Tehran. "We are going to a start a new life in Iraq after long years of oppression."

Security was high, amid fears that the violence plaguing Iraq could spill over into the exile communities around the world during the vote.

Private security guards frisked people entering the polling center in Syria, X-ray machines and metal detectors were deployed in Australia and in the Copenhagen suburb of Taastrup, heavily armed police checked voters as they wound their way through concrete blocs on the road leading to Denmark's only polling station.

Some voters wore traditional Iraqi costumes under heavy winter coats as they waited in temperatures of about 30 degrees outside Scandinavian polling stations.

Not all Iraqis supported the election, however. A group called the Iraqi Committee for Women's Rights set up a table near a polling station in Stockholm, Sweden, and urged people to boycott the election.

"This election is false," said Halala Rafi, who heads the committee. "It's only being held to justify the occupation" by U.S.-led forces.

The protesters did not sway many voters, however; some walked by the committee's table defiantly raising their index fingers smeared in a purple ink showing they had voted.

Australia was the first to begin collecting ballots due to its time zone. Expatriate voters can cast their ballots through Sunday, when those in Iraq will go to the polls to choose a 275-member national assembly that will draft a constitution and elect a president over the next year.

"Iraqis are finally expressing themselves. It is a victory for all the dead that Saddam Hussein killed," said Falastin Saheb, 25, an Iraqi who has been living in Syria for two years and is running a polling center in Rukn el-Din, a Kurdish neighborhood of Damascus.

Banners outside the center read: "Let us hear your voice."

In the Detroit suburb of Southgate, guards were checking IDs at the abandoned store-turned-polling place. Inside, an oversized, homemade Iraqi flag hung from the ceiling. We feel happy now. This is like America, this voting," said Zoha Yess, 64. "We want fair, good government."

Iraqis living in Iran comprised the largest bloc of expatriate voters, with 75 percent of the 81,000 eligible voters in the Islamic Republic having registered.

By contrast, only 25,946 Iraqis registered in the United States, 11 percent of the 234,000 who were eligible, according to the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, which organized the vote.

Many of Iraq's Arab neighbors are concerned that the country's Shiite Muslim majority, long suppressed under Saddam's Sunni-dominated rule, will vote in a government that will strengthen ties with Iran's Shiite theocracy.

Men and women _ many covered from head-to-toe in traditional black chadors _ waited in separate lines outside the Karbalaies Mosque in Tehran, passing through metal detectors before they were allowed to enter. About 20 police officers toting assault rifles stood watch. Four police cruisers parked prominently outside the mosque.

Many said they came out of respect for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, who is not a candidate but has called voting a "religious duty."

Osama Moussa Kaabi, a 56-year-old medical worker who has been living in Iran for 25 years, brought his wife along because al-Sistani also instructed women to vote.

In London, voters and election officials clapped their hands and sang to celebrate the start of voting, and one staff member banged on a drum improvised from a water container.

"It is the first time we have the right to vote and today I feel that I am born again," said Darbaz Rasool, 23, a Kurd who fled Iraq in 1994.

"I'm absolutely delighted, you can see the excitement on my face," said Iraq's ambassador to Britain, Salah Al-Shaikhly, who was applauded as he arrived at the station in Wembley, west London. "I'm over 60 and this is the first time I have been to an Iraqi polling station."

Many historians consider the last free elections in Iraq to have taken place in 1954, when opposition won seats in an election held under British colonial influence. Iraq was a constitutional monarchy at the time.

Iraq's new vote represented a rare exercise in democracy in the Middle East, especially in autocratic Syria.

In an interview with Arab reporters accompanying him on a state visit to Moscow, Syrian President Bashar Assad said he supported elections in Iraq in principle, but that "conditions were not ripe," citing a boycott call by some Sunni Muslims.

Only 280,303 of 1.2 million eligible expatriate Iraqis had registered by Tuesday's deadline, despite two extensions of the timeframe. The low numbers were largely attributed to a shortage of registration and polling places, fears of violence or reprisals and apathy.

Votes were being cast in Australia, United States, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

When voting concludes on Sunday, the overseas counts will be sent to the operation's headquarters in Amman, Jordan, which will forward them to Baghdad. The results will be announced several days later.

© 2005 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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