History Is Likely to Link Bush to Mideast Elections

With Abbas's victory seemingly assured, the real question will be whether Bush is able to take advantage of the fresh leadership to broker deals with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Bush administration plans to bolster Abbas by sponsoring an international donors conference in the spring intended to bring the Palestinian Authority as much as $500 million more annually.

"There was not any point in investing a lot of time of top officials because of Arafat's presence in power," said a senior U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with administration rules. "Now this is an opportunity."

Iraqis are scheduled to choose a 275-member National Assembly, which will in turn name a new interim government and write a constitution. Even Bush and his generals acknowledge that four of the country's 18 provinces are unsafe for voting and many Iraqi political leaders publicly or privately want to postpone the election, but the president has rejected any delay, casting such a move as a victory for terrorists.

Iraqis have no real history of pluralism. Saddam Hussein sponsored farcical "elections" in which the outcome was never in doubt; in balloting in October 2002, his government announced that Hussein won 100 percent of the vote, granting him another seven-year term.

Some aspects of the Palestinian and Iraqi votes appear similar. Both are taking place under military occupation during a violent insurrection. In Palestinian territories, the Islamic radical militant group Hamas is boycotting the vote, while in Iraq many minority Sunnis are threatening to stay home. Already, critics in the Arab world cite such factors as proof of the illegitimacy of the elections. Hence Bush's concern over turnout, particularly in Iraq -- the fewer who participate, he understands, the less credible the elections will be.

"There will be an effort in the region to discredit the elections because they took place under occupation," said Dennis Ross, a Middle East envoy for former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. "But I think the elections in both places will be a spur to reformers. They're riding a tide now that can't be stopped."

The insistence on a quick timetable may boomerang on Bush, though, critics say. If the Sunnis feel marginalized, Diamond said, it will feed the roots of alienation that power the insurgency and lock in a polarized establishment. What is needed first, he said, is to bring Sunnis into the process and make them invested in a new government.

"I can tell you flatly . . . we are not going to get there by January 30th," Diamond said. "If the elections go forward on January 30th, I think it's going to be a disastrous development for Iraq. But the White House has so much of its reputation, so much of its ideology, so much of its credibility, so much of its ego . . . invested that it's absolutely unyielding."

The elections in Iraq, said Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, may underscore "the reality that democracy can easily create as many problems as it solves."

If Sunnis participate and the elections produce leaders who can compromise, that could reduce tension, he wrote in a paper last week.

"To put it mildly, however, such success will come on a wing and a prayer. January 30th will at best be a faltering start and constant effort and aid will be needed throughout the rest of 2005."