Expatriates vote in Iraq election

In addition to Syria, Iraqi nationals are also voting in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, the United States, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Austria, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

The expatriate vote is running from Friday to Sunday.

Iraqi refugees living in Jordan are voting for a new government that will - they hope - improve conditions to the point where they can come home.

Al Jazeera's Nisreen el-Shamayleh, reporting from Amman, the Jordanian capital, said: "They feel that these elections are very crucial and will be more democratic than the previous first parliamentary election held in 2005.

"Turnout at the polls is expected to be very high after the Friday prayers," she said.

The United Nations refugee agency estimates that more than 4.2 million Iraqis have fled the country since the 2003 US-led invasion.

Fragile security

A string of deadly blastsshattered an early round of voting in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, on Thursday, killing 14 people and injuring 57 others.

The separate attacks served as a grim reminder that the security situation still remains precarious for millions of Iraqis ahead of crucial parliamentary elections this Sunday.

"Terrorists wanted to hamper the elections, thus they started to blow themselves up in the streets," Ayden Khalid Qader, the deputy interior minister responsible for election-related security, said.

Strict security measures are coming into force - beginning with a curfew on Friday evening in the Iraqi city of Ramadi and other restrictions lasting three days around Sunday's election.

These include the banning of civilian vehicles on election day.

Sunday's vote will be supervised by as many as 120 international monitors, with a number of foreign embassies providing staff to act as monitors, too.

However, officials expect to see more violence in the run-up to Sunday's poll, and on election day.

The process of forming a new four-year Iraqi governmentafter Sunday's election will be long, difficult and possibly violent, US officials said on Thursday.

"Given the stakes, given the efforts of people to secure political advantage, it would not be surprising to see violence during that period," one of the officials said, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity.

Crucial election

There is no clear front-runner among the political parties in what the official called an "extraordinarily competitive"election.

"We expect the election and the government formation process thereafter to be very hotly contested, and we anticipate a difficult process of government formation that
could take some time."

The new government will be in place as the US completes the withdrawal of its remaining troops by the end of 2011.

There are about 96,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq, but that number is due to be reduced to 50,000 by the end of August 2010.

Despite fears of possible violence, the official said the pullout was on track.

He said Washington expected the Iraqi electoral commission to announce preliminary results on March 10-11, based on votes from about 30 per cent of the polling stations.

The Iraqi supreme court would then certify the poll results, after hearing appeals, within about a month of the election, the official said.

"The chances of having an election that is perceived as legitimate and credible are reasonably high," he said.

"That said, we also anticipate, because the stakes are so high, we are going to see a lot of challenges, a lot of people on all sides claiming something was wrong and there was fraud."

The official also said Washington expected the process of forming a new government to take "months, not weeks."

After the last national election in 2005,it took Iraq's feuding political parties about five months to agree on a prime minister and for a cabinet to be approved