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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Allawi sez elections will take place on time |
| 2004-09-30 |
| Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Thursday that "free and fair" elections in Iraq planned for January would take place on time, despite ongoing unrest in his country. "We will have those elections on time, next year," the interim Iraqi leader told a gathering at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think talk. US officials have already voiced concern that the election might have to bypass trouble spots made too perilous by ongoing insurgencies. Allawi renewed his pledge Thursday to deliver a "full, free and fair" election and called that mission "the most important task entrusted to us". Meanwhile, Allawi denounced as "repugnant" the ordeal of British hostage Kenneth Bigley at the hands of Islamic extremists, and criticised the way the media has covered the story. "It is repugnant to take an innocent man such as Kenneth Bigley and to use him as a political pawn in this way," he said in a speech at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies. But the interim Iraqi premier added that journalists who have put the 62-year-old engineer, seized September 16 in Baghdad, in the global spotlight also need to think "long and hard" about how they may have helped fuel more hostage crises. "Can we justify showing videos of hostages or groups of armed and hooded men? Is this not exactly the publicity that the terrorists seek? Should we play their game?" he asked "We should all be asking if, by doing this, we not only make it not only harder to resolve the cases we deal with today, but invite more cases for tomorrow," Allawi said. In his speech, the Iraqi leader urged Western states to help financially and militarily in the reconstruction of his devastated country. Bigley appeared in a video Wednesday on Al-Jazeera Arabic satellite television channel, bound and huddled inside a cage, pleading with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to help save him. His ordeal has received substantial media coverage in Britain and abroad, with his family - including his elderly mother in Liverpool and his wife in Thailand - making emotional appeals for his release. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |