Iraq will hold parliamentary elections on December 15, the office of the President said on Sunday, setting the next date in the country’s political transition a day after a landmark constitutional referendum.Iraq’s interim constitution, drawn up last year, stated that parliamentary elections would have to be held by December 15, 2005, whether the referendum on the constitution passed or not.Results of the referendum are not yet known, but early returns suggest it was approved and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in London that she believed it had passed.‘‘December 15 is the day,’’ Kamaran Padaghi, a spokesman for Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, said. ‘‘Whether the constitution passes or not, we have to have an election by that date, either for a permanent, four-year assembly or for a new (one-year) interim assembly, so we have set the date,’’ he said, adding that the decision was adopted by presidential decree.Meanwhile, early counts from Saturday’s referendum indicated the vote split as expected along largely communal lines, reflecting the bitter ethnic and religious tensions that have cost thousands of Iraqi lives since the US-led invasion in 2003.‘‘This is a very positive day for the Iraqi people and as well for world peace,’’ US President George W Bush told reporters in Washington. ‘‘Democracies are peaceful countries.’’Tight security kept the polls mostly peaceful although five US soldiers were killed in the Sunni west, the military said.Despite high turnout in some Sunni Arab areas, partial counts suggested the charter’s opponents did not muster enough ‘No’ votes to veto it. According to the referendum rules, a two-thirds ‘No’ vote in three of Iraq’s 18 provinces would block the constitution even if most Iraqis backed it.‘‘All indications we are getting . are encouraging and positive for a ‘Yes’ vote for this constitution,’’ said Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. ‘‘So my guess is it will be passed.’’— Reuters70 pc: Saddam town says ‘no’ to charterTIKRIT: Salahaddin province, one of at least three with a Sunni Arab majority, voted “No” by 70 per cent in Saturday’s referendum, an electoral official said on Sunday. “The results were not final and were subject to further counts,” electoral officials said. “The ‘No’ percentage is 70 per cent,” Electoral Commission official Saleh Khalil Farraj said in Tikrit, hometown of Saddam Hussein. The head of the national Electoral Commission in Baghdad,Hussein al-Hendawi, however, said he was unaware such figures had been collated yet. With a second Sunni-populated province, Anbar, likely to reject the charter by a greater margin, much depends on the third province for a majority vote. — Reuters
