Allawi: Some areas of Iraq may be too unsafe to vote

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Some areas of Iraq will probably be too unsafe to take part in the Jan. 30 elections, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Tuesday in his first acknowledgment of limited voting, and he promised to increase the size of the army in the face of a bloody insurgency, whose latest victims included 13 Iraqis killed by two bombings.

Allawi also spoke by telephone Tuesday with President Bush for about 10 minutes to reaffirm the importance of holding the elections as scheduled, the White House said.

In a news conference, Allawi said the government had allocated $2.2 billion to expand the army from 100,000 to 150,000 troops and provide it with new weaponry. Iraq's armed forces are poorly trained and often under-equipped, making them an easy target for insurgents who want to scuttle the elections.

He acknowledged that some areas of Iraq likely would be too unsafe to participate in the landmark balloting for a constitutional assembly. The country's volatile Anbar province west of Baghdad and areas in the north around Mosul have seen little preparation for the vote.

"Hostile forces are trying to hamper this event and to inflict damage and harm on the march and the guarantee for the participation of all in the elections," Allawi said. "Certainly, there will be some pockets that will not be able to participate in the elections for these reasons, but we think that it will not widespread."

Allawi is a candidate in the election and has been increasingly visible in recent days. The news conference was his second in as many days, and he stood before several Iraqi flags and signs that read "Security and Safety First."

Meanwhile, violence across Iraq continued. A roadside bomb hit a minibus full of Iraqis in Yussifiyah, 10 miles south of Baghdad, said the director of the town's hospital, Dawoud al-Taie.

Al-Taie said the bomb exploded several minutes after a U.S. convoy passed, but there was no indication the convoy was the intended target.

A suicide car bomber who targeted a police headquarters in Tikrit killed six people, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien said, and police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said 12 were wounded.

Two militant groups claimed responsibility for the Tikrit attack. In statements posted on a Web site, the Ansar al-Sunna Army group said it parked a car filled with explosives near the station and then blew it up, while al-Qaida in Iraq, of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said one of its members carried out the "martyrdom attack."

Both statements could not be independently verified but such contradicting statements are rare. The Web sites where the statements appeared frequently air such claims of responsibility.

The last two days have seen a new surge of insurgent attacks in the weeks before the balloting, with four roadside bombings and suicide strikes on Iraqi and American forces Monday.

While Shiites are expected to vote in large numbers, Sunni Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of Iraq's estimated 26 million people, say it is far too dangerous to hold the election this month, and many are refusing to participate. Failure by the Sunni Arabs to participate would undermine the election's credibility.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told The Associated Press that his government will meet Sunday with parties planning to boycott the election to try to persuade them to participate.

In an interview in Cairo, Egypt, Zebari said the Iraqi Committee for Peace and Solidarity, a nongovernmental organization, will host a Jan. 16 conference on reconciliation between the government and its opponents in Baghdad.

"All those who want to boycott the elections are invited to express their views," he said.

Zebari identified one of the boycott groups invited to the meeting as the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential body of Sunni clerics.

The association modified its position on the elections this week, saying it was prepared to participate if the United States and the Iraqi government spelled out a timetable for withdrawing foreign troops from Iraq. The United States rejected the proposal.

"We will do our utmost to make the elections comprehensive," Zebari said. "We want everybody to cast his vote. This is an election for all."

In the news conference, Allawi said the government was reaching out to tribal and religious leaders in some of Iraq's volatile regions to try to get them to participate in the vote. He said he expected the country to reach a consensus in the coming days that elections were necessary.

In other violence Tuesday, an explosion at dawn tore through a gas pipeline between Kirkuk and a refinery in Beiji. An official with the Northern Oil Co. said the pipeline was destroyed and would take five days to repair.

The official said another blast hit a few pipelines running next to one another in the Zegheitoun area, 35 miles southwest of Kirkuk. The extent of the damage was not immediately known.

Insurgents repeatedly have targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, denying the country much-needed reconstruction money. Oil exports to Turkey, the outlet for Iraq's northern fields, were halted because of a bombing in mid-November.

After a relative lull in recent days, Monday saw a new surge of violence that included the roadside bombing of a heavily armored Bradley Fighting Vehicle -- the second in a less than a week -- killing two U.S. soldiers.

The blast came hours after gunmen in a passing car assassinated Baghdad's deputy police chief and his son while they drove to work, part of a campaign to target Iraq's security forces. Al-Qaida in Iraq, the group led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility.

American officials have cautioned that insurgents will escalate attacks before the elections. After a roadside bomb struck a Bradley on Thursday and killed seven soldiers, the Pentagon warned that militants were increasing the size and power of their bombs.

In a suggestion that the insurgents were looking for new ways to intimidate voters, a militant group posted threats in at least two towns warning it would deploy "highly trained" snipers around Iraq during the elections.

The statement, signed by the previously unknown Secret Republican Army, said 32 snipers will operate in Wasit, a largely Shiite province south of Baghdad that includes Kut, Numaniyah and Suwaiyra.

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