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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The leading candidate in a Shi'ite alliance expected to dominate Iraq (news - web sites)'s Jan. 30 elections said on Saturday that majority Shi'ites would not be dragged into a civil war despite a series of bloody attacks on them.
Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told Reuters in an interview that al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading a campaign to try to divide Shi'ites and Sunnis but would not succeed.
"We are strongly standing in the face of this evil plan and any sectarian sedition," Hakim said.
Hakim survived an assassination last month -- a suicide bomb attack on his party's headquarters which for Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility. Hakim became SCIRI leader after his brother Mohammed Baqer was killed by a suicide bomb outside Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrine in the city of Najaf in 2003.
In the latest attacks on Shi'ites, a suicide bomb at a wedding party south of Baghdad killed at least 11 people and a blast at a Shi'ite mosque in the capital killed 14 on Friday.
Hakim said these were all attempts to spark civil war.
"It began with assassinating Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim and it is continuing now with the attacks yesterday on a Shi'ite mosque and on the Shi'ite wedding," Hakim said.
Many Sunni Arabs, who made up the backbone of the ruling class under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), are boycotting Iraq's first multi-party elections in half a century because of a raging Sunni insurgency they say will make a fair vote impossible.
HAKIM SAYS SUNNIS NOT LEFT OUT
But Hakim said it was not true that Sunnis were being left out, adding that 54 of the 111 candidate lists competing in the election are Sunni lists, and there are some Sunni candidates in most lists.
"I think the Sunnis are taking part -- and strongly -- in the elections," he said. He expected more than 50 percent of eligible voters to take part in the elections.
Iraq's main Sunni party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, has withdrawn from the polls, saying they should be delayed.
Sunni Arabs, who make up 20 percent of Iraq's population, fear the elections will bring to power a Shi'ite government with close ties to fellow Shi'ite neighbor Iran, with which Saddam fought an eight-year war.
Sunnis have demanded an improvement in the security situation and a timetable for foreign troops to leave Iraq as a condition for taking part in the polls.
Hakim, who strongly opposes postponing the elections, said holding the polls was the best way to hasten the departure of foreign troops from Iraq.
"We don't see how postponing the elections would help or add anything. We respect the views of all Iraqis but we believe having the elections is the best way to quicken the withdrawal of the foreign forces," he said.
"Through elections we bring a strong government that has the capability of making decisions in the name of Iraqi people, but there is no logic in postponing the elections until a timetable for the withdrawal is set," he added.
"No one wants foreign troops to stay, but setting a timetable for withdrawal must be done through strong Iraqi government."
