Shi’ites list Iraq election hopefuls

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s mainstream Shi’ite groups yesterday announced a broad multiethnic list of 228 candidates for the Jan. 30 elections, a victory for Shi’ite leaders who wanted to present a powerful, united front as they seek a leading role in post-Saddam Iraq after years on the sidelines.

The list includes independent Sunni Muslims, a Shi’ite Kurdish group, members of the Yazidis minority religious sect and a Turkmen movement, among others.

It also includes members of the Iraqi National Congress, led by former exile and one-time Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi.

Members of participating groups said the coalition’s platform would include a call for working toward the withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign troops in Iraq.

The nation’s major Sunni Arab factions were not included and have called for the vote to be postponed. Also absent was radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Sheik al-Sadr’s chief political adviser, Ali Sumeisim, told Agence France-Presse that the sheik refused to participate because his followers are being arrested and harassed.

But Mr. Sumeisim said that if the restrictions on the movement were lifted, the sheik and his followers would support the Shi’ite list of candidates.

In a sign that Sunni Arab ranks might be breaking, one of the leading parties that had called for a delay, the Iraqi Islamic Party, quietly submitted its own 275-member list of candidates.

Party officials said that they wanted to reserve the right to take part if their calls for the vote to be put off are not heeded.

Meanwhile, seven Iraqis were killed yesterday in separate clashes in Baghdad and the volatile western city of Ramadi.

A car bomb also rocked a busy Mosul vegetable market, wounding two civilians, while a U.S. soldier was injured by a roadside bomb in the capital.

Another American soldier suffered minor injuries in a similar attack the day before in Samarra, the scene of clashes that culminated in the resignation of the town’s police chief.

In a related development, Japan’s Cabinet voted to extend its troop deployments in Iraq by one year.

Iraq’s leading Shi’ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, had appointed a six-member panel that put together the list of list of 23 parties, dubbed the United Iraqi Alliance.

He has been working to unite Iraq’s majority Shi’ites ahead of the vote to ensure victory, while including representatives from Iraq’s other diverse communities. Shi’ites make up 60 percent of Iraq’s 26 million population.

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