Rumsfeld Rushes to Baghdad to Save General Election

DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources in Iraq have just disclosed the arrival in Baghdad Thursday night, Dec. 23, of US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for an effort to salvage the general election to the Iraqi National Assembly. Former prime minister Iyad Allawi, head of the Iraqi List and a key American ally, announced he is boycotting the elections and the new Iraqi parliament and is demanding a re-run of the vote.

His demand is backed by 30 Sunni Muslim parties whose members won seats in the new assembly.

According to Allawi, convoys of ten to 15 trucks carrying sealed ballot boxes stuffed with forged voting slips, voters’ certificates and signed documents of electoral personnel were intercepted on election-day. They were picked up by Iraqi security forces at the southern Iraqi towns of Qut, Al Amara and Basra. An investigation disclosed that the trucks were organized by Iranian intelligence agents to falsely boost the pro-Iranian Shiite majority.

Rumsfeld will do his best to talk Allawi round in order to rescue one of the Bush administration’s greatest feats from collapse.