An Iraq working group meeting will take place in London from 6:30pm for two hours. Falah Al-Thahabi and Ambassador Mark Hambley will both be present. For further details contact NCFPeace@aol.com

A meeting to discuss the NCF election monitoring team's draft report on the recent parliamentary elections in Iraq

Stafford writes that the updated table herewith corrects the total number of seats which is based on one seat per 100,000 population for a highly questionable total population of 32,300,000.

According to Stafford: Given obvious migrations into the Kurdistan Region since 2003 by returnees and those fleeing violence from other parts of the country since 2005, it is difficult to accept that such population increases are not reflected in a higher number of seats. Governorate (provincial) population increases in the total (unrealistic) figure of 32.3 million are questionably allocated largely among governorates outside the Region.

The last official figures with some semblance of official international certification were governorate figures listed in the December 2002 Distribution Plan for the UN-managed oil-for-food program. For certain parts of the country, however, these figure were estimated to have been inflated by as much as 3 million.

London working group meeting on Iraq. For further information contact ncfpeace@aol.com

NCF / KRG meeting at the conservative party conference

The report attached is the final report on Iraq’s January 2009 Provincial Elections, which is a matter of public record published by the Next Century Foundation.

Iraq's local elections, which saw mass Sunni and Shiite participation, were hailed a major success in both security terms and in terms of the smooth running of the election process. There were no official reports of any violence by the sectarian militias or any terrorist groups, which is of itself an important breakthrough for both Iraq's internal security and as well as Iraq's fragile democracy.

Much of the media coverage on Iraq has concentrated on al-Maliki's victory in last weekend's provincial elections. The BBC speaks of tentative first steps towards a stable democracy, while others concentrate on voter turnout and al-Maliki's ties to the former Bush administration.