JUST POLITICS:

Allawi Confident About Iraq Elections (HAMZA HENDAWI, 11/22/04, Associated Press)

Iraq's interim prime minister said Monday he's confident only a small number of people will boycott the Jan. 30 elections despite anger among many Sunni Muslims over the Fallujah offensive and a deadly U.S.-Iraqi raid on a Baghdad mosque. [...]

Despite the violence, the Iraqi government Sunday set Jan. 30 as the date for parliamentary elections, the first since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Officials said the balloting would be held even in areas still plagued by insurgency and despite calls by militant Sunni clerics for a boycott.

However, Allawi, a secular Shiite hand-picked by the Americans last June, said he believed that only "a very small minority" would abstain during the election "for one reason or another."

"Their reason will be political, and not sectarian, and they will not be more than 5, 6 or 7 percent," Allawi said in his office in the U.S.-guarded Green Zone. "They are the eventual losers."

Allawi is expected to run for a seat in the assembly, which would then choose the government.