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Iraqis go to the polls in 15 countries
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-14 08:26

Iraqi expatriates voting Tuesday for a parliament in their homeland said they want stability and an end to the violence in Iraq.

But the voters — in 15 countries around the world — were as divided on how to get there as as their communities are back home.

Strong voter turnout was seen in polling stations around the world, including in Syria, Jordan and Iran, where Associated Press reporters witnessed heavier turnout compared to Iraq's landmark January elections. Official turnout figures were not immediately available.

Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish concerns were reflected among many of the Iraqis living in neighboring countries, Europe and the United States. Voters came from all stages of their country's stormy past — those who fled Saddam Hussein's rule, and others who left amid the 2003 U.S.-led invasion or took refuge abroad from the relentless bloodshed that followed.

Iraqis go to the polls in 15 countries
Raheel Mariam, of Sterling Heights, right, raises her ink-stained finger while voting as her husband Gorgees Marcos, left, looks on at the Iraqi national elections voting center in Farmington Hills, Mich., Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2005. [Reuters]
Iyad al-Iraqi, 22, a Sunni Arab voting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, said he hoped the elections would bring more "Muslim Arabs" to power.

"We hated living under Saddam, but at least it was safer then. Give us a thousand like Saddam, but not a single American to rule us," he said.

Sunnis at home and abroad largely shunned Jan. 30 elections for an interim parliament that wrote the nation's constitution — Iraq's first free vote in decades. The result was a legislature dominated by members of the Shiite Muslim majority and the strong Kurdish minority.

This time Sunnis in Iraq were pressing for a strong turnout to build their numbers in the 275-member legislature — and the response in predominantly Sunni Jordan and Syria suggested the communities there were answering the call.

Voting also appeared heavy among Iraqis in mainly Shiite Iran, a close ally of the Shiite parties that control the current government in Baghdad. Hundreds lined up at a polling station in southern Tehran to cast ballots.

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