This may fit the thanks for nothing category.
Representatives of seven nations met in Ottawa this week to recruit international observers for the Iraqi elections and agreed to watch the vote, but from the safety of Amman, Jordan. They said it was too dangerous to monitor the voting in Iraq, meaning international observers are unlikely for the elections on Jan. 30 - making them the first significant vote of this sort recently with no foreign presence, United Nations officials say.
The United Nations, the European Union and many nongovernmental groups involved in election and democracy projects are helping to organize and administer the vote. As a result, they argue, acting as monitors would be a conflict of interest. The United States, a senior State Department official said, "will have as low a profile as possible during the election." Specialists and officials involved in foreign elections say international monitors are a crucial tool for ensuring that difficult elections are seen as free and fair, as shown recently in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
Foreign observers in Afghanistan diffused the controversy over the ink used on some ballots; some candidates had said the ink used for fingerprints could easily be removed. Foreign observers in Ukraine, including Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, countered the government's contention that its candidate had won the election, despite widespread fraud. When Canada agreed early this month to convene a group of nations - Canada, Britain, Indonesia, Mexico, Panama, Albania and Yemen - to examine the question of observing the elections, officials in Washington and at the United Nations were hopeful that the impasse on recruiting international monitors might finally be broken. |