BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Iraqi government Saturday brushed aside Sunni Muslim demands to delay the Jan. 30 election, and a spokesman for the majority Shiite community called the date “nonnegotiable.” Insurgents stepped up attacks, blasting U.S. patrols in Baghdad and killing a U.S. soldier north of the capital.
Clashes also occurred north of Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi forces fought a three-hour gun battle with insurgents who overran a town hall and two police stations, local officials said.
Talk of delaying the election gained momentum after influential Sunni Muslim politicians urged the government to postpone the voting for six months to give authorities time to secure polling stations and to persuade Sunni clerics to abandon their call for an electoral boycott.
But the spokesman for interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, said the government was sticking by the Jan. 30 date after receiving assurances from the Iraqi Electoral Commission that an election could take place even in Sunni areas wracked by the insurgency.
In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Mohammed Hussein al-Hakim, son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Said al-Hakim, said the Shiite leadership would not accept a delay and called this position “nonnegotiable.”
He said elections were “the most legitimate way on the international level to express the will of the people,” and “all parties have agreed on this date and we cannot take back this position for any reason.”
Insurgent violence still grips the Sunni areas despite the U.S.-led assault this month on the main insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad. The attack was launched to try to curb the insurgency so elections could be held nationwide.
An American soldier from the 1st Infantry Division was killed Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. patrol about 40 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.
Two U.S. military vehicles, including an armored shuttle bus, were damaged by a bomb Saturday on the road to Baghdad International Airport, which the State Department considers one of the most dangerous routes in the country. An al-Qaida-affiliated group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Three civilians died and a dozen were injured in other bomb attacks against U.S. convoys in the Baghdad area, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
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