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Iraq to seal borders during elections

* Interior minister warns of civil war if Sunnis boycott polls

BAGHDAD: Iraq said on Tuesday it would shut its land borders and bar traffic from getting close to voting centres over the Jan. 30 polls to try to thwart attacks, as insurgents targeted a Shi’ite party with a suicide bomb.

An archbishop from the beleaguered Iraqi Christian minority was freed by kidnappers who had snatch him a day earlier.

A statement from Iraq’s election commission said frontier posts would be closed and tight restrictions declared on all vehicle traffic from Jan. 29-31, a set of extraordinary measures aimed at preventing a bloodbath on election day.

Hours earlier, a suicide car bomber attacked a Baghdad office used by a major Shi’ite party in the latest insurgent attack apparently aimed at stoking sectarian strife.

Police said one person was killed and seven were wounded by the blast outside the office used by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). A leading SCIRI official said the dead man was one of the guards at the building. He said guards had opened fire at the suicide bomber’s vehicle as it approached a checkpoint.

SCIRI’s leader heads a list of mainly Shi’ite candidates expected to win strong support in the elections. Officials said a candidate in the party list of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi’ite who is fielding a separate slate, was killed in the city of Basra on Tuesday.

The polls have divided Iraq, with most of the 60 percent Shi’ite majority insisting the vote goes ahead to cement their political dominance after decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein, while many Sunni Arabs say the election should be delayed because of widespread violence. The raging insurgency in Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland means that many Sunnis who want to vote say they are too afraid to do so. Several leading Sunni Arab parties say they will boycott the polls because the results will not be fair.

Sunni Arabs dominated the ruling class under Saddam, but many now fear losing influence.

Civil war: Iraqi Interior Minister Falah Naqib on Tuesday warned the country risked sliding into civil war if the Sunni Muslim minority boycotts the January 30 general elections.

“Failing to take part in the elections is tantamount to treason and will lead to a civil war and the division of the country,” the minister told reporters. “All Iraqis should take part in the elections as best they can. It is not crucial who they vote for, the important thing is that everyone participates,” he said.

Naqib himself is a member of the Sunni Arab minority, which has threatened to boycott the polls.

Some argue that elections are impossible amid relentless nationwide violence, others intend to boycott the vote in protest at the presence of foreign troops, while extremists oppose the very idea of a democratic system for Iraq and seek to create chaos. agencies

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