Bush Aims To Forge A GOP Legacy

AGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets, which were closed to traffic but full of children playing soccer, and men and women, some carrying babies.

American officials were showing confidence that today was going to be a big success, although they were still wary of the possibility of major attacks by insurgents.

In the Karada district of central Baghdad, everyone, it seemed, was walking to the polls, where they lined up to vote 50 people deep.

They dropped their ballots into boxes even as continuous mortar shells started exploding at about noon, without reports of major casualties, and despite two suicide bombings in Baghdad that killed up to six people. There were news agency reports from other parts of the country that 29 people were killed in attacks on polling stations.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets, which were closed to traffic but full of children playing soccer, and men and women, some carrying babies.

American officials were showing confidence that today was going to be a big success, although they were still wary of the possibility of major attacks by insurgents.

In the Karada district of central Baghdad, everyone, it seemed, was walking to the polls, where they lined up to vote 50 people deep.

They dropped their ballots into boxes even as continuous mortar shells started exploding at about noon, without reports of major casualties, and despite two suicide bombings in Baghdad that killed up to six people. There were news agency reports from other parts of the country that 29 people were killed in attacks on polling stations.

There was some confusion at one Karada polling station, but in the main it was very orderly and very smooth, with very tight security.

If the insurgents wanted to stop people from voting, they failed. If they wanted to cause chaos, they failed. The voters were completely defiant, and although there was never the sense that the insurgency was over, there was a feeling that the people of Baghdad, showing a new, positive attitude, had turned a corner.

The atmosphere in this usually grim capital, a city at war and an ethnic microcosm of the country, had changed, with people dressed in their finest clothes to go to the polls in what was generally a convivial mood.

"You can feel the enthusiasm," Col. Mike Murray of the First Cavalry Regiment, said outside a polling station in Karada, who added that the scene in Karada was essentially true for the whole area.

In Khadamiya, a mixed area in northwest Baghdad, the turnout was also large, with some representatives of political parties saying the turnout could approach 80 percent.

Even in the so-called Sunni Triangle people voted, too. In Baquba, 60 miles north of Baghdad, all the polling stations that reported indicated a huge turnout.

In Mosul, the restive city to the north, large turnouts were reported, even in the Sunni Muslim areas. There was discontent among Kurds, however, because of a failure to deliver election boxes. They asked for a 24-hour extension of the election, but officials said that was not possible.

In Ramadi, only six people had voted after seven hours at a polling station on the south side of the Euphrates River across from the town. Many people were apparently intimidated at crossing the bridge over the river, because potential voters would make themselves highly visible.

Lieut. Col. Joseph Southcott, of the 1/9 Battalion of the Second Infantry Division, which has been brought in from South Korea, said he and his men would judge their success not by the turnount, which appeared to be less than 1 percent, but whether they had created safe conditions to vote.

Units of the division, which crossed the bridge into the city, found men and boys on street corners, who shouted "Inshallah!," but showed no signs of hostility.

Several explosions broke out across Baghdad this morning, especially in the southwestern section of the city. American attack helicopters circled over the city center, and the roar of fighter jets could be heard from high above.

At least four people were killed in a blast at a polling station in Baghdad's Sadr City district and a mortar attack killed two in the southern part of the city.

Qasim Muhammad Saleh, 45, walking with his two sons, Sajad, 5, and Jowid, 12, had just come from voting at Lebanon High School in Karada. The boys were carrying Iraqi flags, and Mr. Saleh's right index finger carried the ink marks showing he had cast his ballot.

"We now have our freedom," he said. "After 35 years, we finally got rid of Saddam and now we can vote for whoever we want.

"After casting my ballots, I'm hoping that the situation will improve."

Nearby, at the Nawfal primary school in Karada, there was a steady stream of people lining up to go through the barbed wire checkpoint in order to vote. Inside, people were shrugging off the sounds of explosions, and the mood was upbeat, even enthusiastic, as they went through the voting process.

Voters appeared to be turning out in large numbers in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, especially in Sulaimaniya, where attacks have been muted, news agencies reported.

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the commander in Mosul, said that about an hour and a half after the polls opened that there were reports of mortar attacks and small arms fire around the city. The general also said there appeared to be a good turnout in the northwest section of the city, surprising because it is a mostly Sunni area.

Iraqi officials predicted that 8 million of the country's 14 million eligible voters would cast ballots, which would be a turnout of roughly 57 percent.

The election will create the basis here for the rise to power of a Shiite-dominated government for the first time in the country's 85-year history. But the chaotic situation on the ground seemed to render most predictions about the future composition of the government tenuous at best.

The turnout, and the ease with which the election is carried off, are regarded as major tests of the Bush administration's goal of planting a democratic government in the heart of the Middle East, and for its hopes to stabilize this country and eventually bring 155,000 American troops home. Mr. Bush, in his weekly radio address on Saturday, said he expected the insurgents to do everything possible to thwart the voting because free elections would "expose the emptiness of their vision for Iraq."

The election is one of a number of landmarks intended by Iraqi leaders and American officials to set up a democratic state here, following the destruction of Saddam Hussein's government in the spring of 2003. Iraqi voters will elect a 275-member national assembly, which will be empowered to write the country's permanent constitution. After that task, to be completed in the autumn, voters will choose a full-term national assembly in December.

Iraqi voters will also be selecting provincial parliaments, and the Kurds in the north will be voting for candidates to the regional government there that was set up after the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

With soldiers and the police swarming the streets, the country was relatively quiet for most of Saturday. A suicide bomber killed eight people, including a child, in an attack on a police building in the town of Khanaqin, near the Iranian border. A gun battle broke out between Iraqi troops and insurgents on Haifa Street, one of the most dangerous thoroughfares in central Baghdad. Insurgents attacked at least seven polling places, from Dohuk in the north to Basra in the south.

The country's leaders, most of whom, like Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, are candidates for office, were uncharacteristically quiet, issuing few last-minute appeals to the Iraqis to go to the polls. That chore was left to the Independent Iraqi Election Commission, whose thousands of workers have been active since last fall to prepare.

"Everything is ready, the security is in place, and all the materials have been taken to the voting centers," said Fareed Ayar, an official with the election commission. "We are now asking the Iraqi people to vote."

Iraqi Shiites are expected to turn out in great numbers, spurred in part by a proclamation from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite leader, declaring it the religious duty of every Iraqi Shiite to vote. Many of the followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a young cleric at odds with the religious establishment, appeared ready to stay home.

The enthusiasm among Shiites has its mirror opposite in Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, most of whose leaders have called for boycott of the election. In Anbar, Nineveh and Salahuddin provinces, where Sunni Arabs are the majority and where fighting with American forces is continuous, Iraqis predicted that the combination of intimidation and apathy would keep most voters away from the polls.

The prospect of a widespread boycott by Sunnis and others raises the possibility that the results of the election will be viewed as illegitimate. Some Iraqis have said that in that case, the election could push the country toward a full-scale civil war.

For all the thousands of soldiers and police officers on the streets, the security around many polling places appeared inadequate and improvised. Many of the barricades consisted of little more than a string of bricks, tin cans and cardboard boxes.

The uncertain turnout of Iraqi voters seemed the most vexing, as well as the most important, question hanging over the election. The voting follows an unusually truncated period of campaigning, in which many of the country's 7,400-plus political candidates were too frightened to venture into public or even to identify themselves, particularly in the northern and central parts of the country where the insurgency is strongest.

In the largely Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, many Iraqis, particularly followers of Ayatollah Sistani, said they would brave bombs and gunfire to cast a ballot.

"I voted under Saddam - it was bogus - and now I am ready for a real election," said Mohsin Abdul Ruda, a 50-year-old shopkeeper, who lives down the street from a girls' school that will serve as his neighborhood's polling place. "Everyone in the neighborhood is going to vote."

Mr. Ruda said he planned to vote for the United Iraq Alliance, the coalition of mostly Shiite parties brought together by Ayatollah Sistani.

As he spoke, three loud explosions echoed nearby.

"There is no fear," Mr. Ruda said, waving his hand. "Only cowards will be afraid to vote."

John F. Burns and Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and Christine Hauser contributed from Mosul.

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