Hope runs high as Iraqis vote in landmark poll

Damascus: Polling stations were open across Iraq yesterday amid tight security for the first stage of a landmark provincial election in the nation's first ballot since 2005.

The advance voting started ahead of Saturday's main polling day to try to avoid the security, logistical and electoral fraud problems during the parliamentary election of 2005 when the vote was held on single day.

About 614,000 police, soldiers, hospital patients and prisoners were eligible to cast ballots at 1,699 voting centres . The election is seen by Washington and Baghdad as a litmus test of Iraq's stability in the face of simmering unrest as US troops prepare to accelerate their plan to withdraw from Iraq by 2011.

Major-General Abdul Amir Ridha Mohammad, an army commander in Kirkuk, held up a finger dyed with purple ink that proved he had voted. "This day is a victory for all Iraqis," he said.

Two small bombs killed a policeman and wounded three civilians in Mosul, where the vote is expected to see Arabs win local power from Kurds. "The turnout was excellent... The process went smoothly," Faraj Al Haidari, head of Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission, told Reuters after polls closed.

Major-General Qassim Moussawi, security spokesman for Baghdad, said "the process ended with great success, without any security breach."

Even as the historic elections got under way, Baghdad named its first ambassador to Syria in 28-years. Sources at the Iraqi Embassy in Damascus told Gulf News that the new ambassador will be Ala'a Al Jawadi, who currently serves as the director of Arab Affairs at the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Ties between Iraq and Syria have been turbulent in the past as both countries were governed by competing branches of the pan-Arab Baathist movement, and were severed in 1980.