[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 806]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                EXPRESSING CONCERNS OVER IRAQ ELECTIONS

  (Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, today I am sending a letter to Secretary-
Designate Rice and Ambassador Negroponte expressing concerns over the 
Iraq elections that are to take place in just 5 days.
  It will be impossible to determine the extent to which corruption, 
voter intimidation or outright fraud will mar the results. Here is why: 
there is a total absence of international election observers for the 
process. As such, it will make the elections themselves, regrettably, a 
farce.
  International observers were present at polling sites in Nigeria, 
East Timor, Haiti, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Ukraine. Iraq is the 
first so-called transitional election in the past 2 decades that will 
not have international election observers touring polling stations. 
Instead, Iraq will have a ``mission,'' which will assess the elections 
from Amman, Jordan, inspecting the Iraq elections from Amman, Jordan.
  This is not acceptable, to stage an election that cannot be monitored 
for fairness, where it cannot be independently determined whether 
ballot boxes are being stuffed.

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