Religious leaders on Friday ordered Iraqis to vote in weekend parliamentary elections to safeguard the war-wracked nation's fledgling democracy and to ensure the ballot is free of fraud.
The call came as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a London inquiry into the 2003 US-led invasion to oust dictator Saddam Hussein that the move to go to war was "the right decision" despite widespread protests against it.
The final days of the campaign for Sunday's poll, the second since Saddam was toppled and which comes less than six months before US combat troops quit Iraq, have been rocked by a series of suicide bombings that killed dozens.
An estimated 1.4 million of the nation's diaspora began to cast their votes Friday in 80 cities in 16 different countries.
Some of the 6,200 candidates from across Iraq's complex religious and ethnic spectrum made television and radio appearances at the end of a campaign in which public meetings and street electioneering were largely absent.
Shiite and Sunni religious leaders used Friday prayers to tell their followers they must vote.
"You must go to the voting centres because it is your duty," said Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Jorani, Sunni imam of the Al-Hai mosque in the central city of Baquba, where 33 people were killed in three suicide attacks on Wednesday.
"Even if you don't want to vote, go to the voting centres to destroy your electoral papers so they cannot be forged by others fraudulently."
Sunnis are expected to cast ballots in large numbers, in stark contrast to their 2005 boycott of the poll.
Ahmed al-Safi, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, the country's top Shiite cleric, said the election was a "huge vital issue," essential to ensuring Iraqis can "draw their own future."
"Turning away from voting, or having small participation in the elections for any reason, will give others a chance to achieve their illegal goals," said Safi at prayers in the holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the Shiite head of the State of Law Alliance, said this week he was "certain" of victory.
But he faces stiff competition from Shiite former premier Iyad Allawi, who gained the vote of Ahmed Fuad, a 22-year-old student, at a polling station in Amman in neighbouring Jordan.
"I hope the situation will improve there (in Iraq) so we can go back to our country. We are fed up with homesickness," Fuad told AFP.
Allawi's secular Iraqiya list has strong support in Sunni areas.
Also competing for the top job are former deputy premier Ahmed Chalabi, who was once favoured but is now loathed by Washington, Shiite Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi and Finance Minister Baqer Jaber Solagh.
Iraq's fragmented political scene virtually ensures that no single party will emerge with the 163 seats needed to form a government on its own and the ensuing horse-trading to form a governing coalition is likely to be protracted.
The US military sees Sunday's poll as a crucial precursor to withdrawing its combat troops in August and said it would continue to provide Iraqi security forces with intelligence, logistical and air support for the election.
Two suicide bombings and a rocket attack killed 14 people in Baghdad and marred early voting for security forces on Thursday, despite a massive security operation involving 200,000 police and soldiers in the Iraqi capital alone.
Britain, Washington's chief ally in the 2003 invasion despite massive street demonstrations against military action at home, is currently holding an inquiry into its role in the conflict.
Labour Prime Minister Brown on Friday faced questions there about his role in funding the war as finance minister under former British premier Tony Blair.
"Nobody wants to go to war, nobody wants to see innocent people die, nobody wants to see their forces put at risk of their lives," Brown said, but added: "I think it was the right decision and made for the right reasons."
Witnesses to the inquiry, including the defence minister at the time of the invasion, Geoff Hoon, have said the military lacked sufficient funding and equipment for years before the war.
Adding to the pressure, a former chief of the defence staff has alleged British soldiers' lives were lost in Iraq and Afghanistan because Brown turned down pleas for better equipment.
Copyright 2010  AFP Global Edition
