WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (AFP) - US ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte said Sunday that he expects "wide participation" in the upcoming Iraqi elections but that turnout among the Sunni Muslim community should not determine the legitimacy of the January 30 vote.
"I don't think we should allow the question of Sunni turnout to be the arbiter, if you will, of the legitimacy of this election," Negroponte said in an interview from Baghdad with the Fox News Sunday television program.
"I think we have to be very careful about that," he said. "And to me the important thing is that the election will be taking place and I suspect there will be very wide participation.
"We would like to see as much voting take place in the Sunni areas as possible," the US envoy said.
The US point man in Iraq gave interviews to five different US television programs Sunday. He faced a blizzard of questions on the vote and the expected Sunni turnout, as well as questions on Iraq's armed forces and the state of the insurgency.
Interviewed on ABC News, Negroponte said he expected "strong participation in the elections, especially in the northern and in the southern parts of the war torn country.
"There may be some problematic areas in the center, particularly in two of the provinces in the Sunni triangle," he underscored.
"But even there every effort is being made to provide the kind of security that will permit the largest possible number of residents there to be able to vote."
International organizations will not be observing the Iraq poll next Sunday and the location of many polling stations has yet to be announced amid fears that they could targetted by insurgents bent on disrupting the vote.
Asked what percentage of voters need to turn out to make the election a success, Negroponte declined to get into a numbers game.
"Well, I think there's a danger here of trying to judge the legitimacy or credibility of the election in turnout alone," he told CBS' Face The Nation program.
Negroponte told Fox "things are getting better in Iraq" and that no one political party was likely to hold a dominant position following the elections.
"There are three or four (political) front-runners if you will ... but even there I don't think that any group is going to necessarily win a majority," Negroponte stressed.
"And there is certainly not going to be any monolithic party that is going to dominate this new national assembly," he said, adding that Iraq's new government would represent a mix of political parties and individuals.
Negroponte spoke in response to a question suggesting that Iraq's Shiite leaders would end up dominating political control after the vote, a likelihood some observers say would alienate Iraq's minority Sunni Muslim community further from the political process.
Asked by CBS what would happen after the election if a new government asked US troops to leave Iraq, Negroponte replied: "I don't think that will happen. I'm not aware of many (Iraqi) political leaders who would want us to leave before the Iraqi armed forces and police were able to take on that (security) responsibility."
The US ambassador declined to place a figure on the number of Iraqi troops and police trained by US forces amid a fierce debate here on their number.
However, he pegged the number of Iraqi "battalions" somewhere in the order of 70 to 80.
The Washington Post newspaper reported Sunday that a former US general has concluded that Washington must speed up the training of Iraqi forces by assigning thousands more military trainers alongside Iraqi troops.
Asked about the report, Negroponte replied: "I don't want to prejudge or second guess what General (Gary) Luck is going to report to Secretary (Donald) Rumsfeld, after all he hasn't reported yet, he'll do that this week."
The administration of US President George W. Bush says over 120,000 Iraqi security personnel have been trained by Washington, but some opposition Democrats contend that only 4,000 such forces have been trained.
Quizzed about this wide disparity, Negroponte told CBS: "I think that figure (4,000) significantly underestimates the work that's been accomplished."
Negroponte told CNN he did not agree with some assessments that suggest insurgent attacks are increasing, but he said the intimidation of Iraqi officials had risen.
"I think certain activities they they've (insurgents) undertaken have definitely increased," he told CNN.
01/23/2005 17:11 GMT - AFP