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Rafsanjani hails elections as a 'victory'
Tehran: Prominent Iranian cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani yesterday hailed the Iraqi election as a victory which Iran also shared because it was the "opposite of what the US sought". "We share this victory with the Iraqis and congratulate them on that," said the influential former president in a Friday prayer sermon carried live on state radio. "It is a victory because it is the opposite of what the US and its collaborators sought," said Rafsanjani, who heads Iran's top arbitration body the Expediency Council. "The Americans were seeking to occupy the land and intimidate the people from their military bases and embassies by putting a puppet government in power," he said.
Praise from global monitors
Amman: Foreign election monitors yesterday said Iraq's elections met international standards despite some irregularities. "I think by and large we have come to the conclusion that basically the election and the process in place conforms to international standards," Paul Dacey, Vice-Chair of the steering committee of International Mission for Iraqi Elections (IMIE), said. The Canada-based multinational group of experts is based in Jordan but supervised hundreds of foreign observers and domestic monitors in Iraq. A turning point, says Arab press
Dubai: Newspapers across the Arab world hailed Sunni Arab participation in Iraq's largely peaceful election as a turning point in the war-torn country that will grant legitimacy to the new government. "The voice of the Iraqi people was being heard yesterday, not the bomb blasts of the terrorists," said the Saudi English-language daily Arab News. "The fact that so many Sunnis trooped to the polling stations for the first time, having boycotted the previous two national votes, sends the clear message that the community which most of the insurgents pretend to represent wants peace, not violence," it added. The polling saw a high turnout and minimal violence across the country as Iraqis chose their first full-term parliament since the fall of Saddam Hussain following the US-led invasion in 2003. "Sunni participation achieved legitimacy of Iraqi elections," said Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar.
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