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Iraqi Exiles Go to the Polls
 Thousands of exiles started voting yesterday in 14 countries across the globe in historic Iraqi elections. At home, insurgents kept up their campaign to intimidate people ahead of tomorrow's vote, killing eight Iraqis and five American soldiers in bomb and mortar attacks. The interim Iraqi government claimed capturing two more aides to Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi. In countries ranging from Australia to the United States, via the Middle East and Europe, voters turned out to elect the 275-member Transitional National Assembly, two days ahead of the poll in Iraq. In Jordan, 60-year-old Lamia Jamal was the first Iraqi of the 20,000-plus registered there to make her choice on how to fill the vacuum left by Saddam Hussein, removed by US-led troops 22 months ago. "She was very proud, very happy and wanted to be the first so she could tell her grandchildren," said Astrid Meister, a spokeswoman for the International Organization of Migration (IOM), organizing the expatriate vote. "So far so good," was the verdict of Jean Philippe Chauzy, an IOM spokesman at its Geneva headquarters, who predicted a good turnout among the relatively small numbers who had signed up to vote."Of the 280,000 people who bothered to go in person to register to vote, we believe that the participation over the three days... will be high," he said. The figure of 280,000 is only around a quarter of those eligible to take part, and far below estimates made at the start of the nine-day registration process on Jan. 17. The first vote was cast by Shimon Haddad, manager of a polling center in the suburb of Fairfield, Sydney. "I'm proud to vote for the election. We have been looking forward to this time (for the) last 50 years," he said. The heaviest polling was in Iran, where more than 60,000 people from the large population exiled from its neighbor to the west were registered to vote. Posted by: Fred 2005-01-29 |
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