BAGHDAD, November 27 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The Iraqi electoral commission ruled out Saturday, November 27, delaying the January elections as top Shiite scholars threatened to withhold support for the interim government.

“Postponing the elections is out of the question,” chairman Abdel Hussein Al-Hindawi told reporters after meeting of the electoral commission, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Seventeen Iraqi parties, including interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's, pressed on Friday, November 27, for a six-month delay of the January elections to allow for an improvement of the security conditions in the country.

“Unrest and terrorist acts as well as insufficient preparations at the administrative, technical and political levels necessitate the date be reconsidered,” they said in a statement.

However, each movement that agreed to the document reserved itself the right to take part or not in the vote if their demand was rejected.

The signatories included Allawi's Iraqi National Accord, former presidential candidate and senior Sunni statesman Adnan Pachachi's Independent Democratic Gathering, Iraqi Islamic Party, as well as the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

Sending a strong message, a spokesman for Iraq's top Shiite scholars said they would not accept any attempt to delay the elections.

"The Marajiy (religious Shiite leaders in Najaf) thinks a postponement of the elections would be unacceptable," Mohammed Hussein Al-Hakim told reporters.

"The date of the elections can no longer be questioned, the issue has been decided," said the spokesman, who is also the son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Said Al-Hakim.

He said he was speaking in the name of all four leaders of the Marjaiya, which includes the influential Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the highest Shiite authority in Iraq.

Sistani strongly opposes any delay of the vote and repeatedly urged Shiites to make their voice heard.

The Marajiy reportedly threatened to issue a fatwa (religious edict) against supporting the interim government, saying it supported the government after a pledge to organize elections in January.

No representatives of the country's two main Shiite parties, Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), were on the delay list.

On the streets of the Shiite district of Kadhimiya, walls are plastered with posters encouraging people to cast their ballots.

“Your voice is worth more than gold,” says one slogan scrawled over a picture of Sistani.

“The religious leadership instructs us to vote,” reads another poster.

“People are enthusiastic. They insist that the information on the application forms is correct so that they can vote,” Abu Fares, a shopkeeper in Kadhimiyah who is responsible for handing out application forms for people to register to vote, told AFP.

But in the ever bustling if violent capital, Shiites and Sunnis could not be more divided over the election with a threatened boycott by 70 groups looming large over Sunni districts.

In the heart of the Sunni quarter of Adhamiya, potential voters grimaced over the application forms.

Close to 70 groups have threatened to boycott the vote, charging that any poll should only be held after the withdrawal of foreign troops, and to protest onslaughts on Sunni cities.

“We believe there will be adequate security for these elections to be held on January 30,” Negroponte said

US Ambassador in Iraq John Negroponte told AFP Saturday that the security situation should not prevent elections from being held as scheduled.

“We believe there will be adequate security for these elections to be held on January 30,” he said during a surprise visit to the city of Fallujah, which has recently been the scene of the worst post-war fighting in Iraq.

“We support the implementation of the transitional law in Iraq,” Negroponte added.

US President George W. Bush said in Crawford, Texas, he wanted the vote to go as scheduled.

“In terms of Iraq, the Iraqi Election Commission has scheduled elections in January, and I would hope they'd go forward in January.”

On January 30, Iraqis are supposed to elect 275 MPs, Baghdad's 51-strong council and 17 other 41-member regional councils.

In the north, Kurds will also vote for 11 members due to sit in the autonomous parliament in place in northern Iraq since 1992.

On Tuesday, November 23, a national guardsman securing an election centre was killed in the ethnically tense oil city of Kirkuk.

On November 18, an application-form warehouse was torched in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city.

On the same day, a statement posted on the website of the militant group Ansar Al-Sunna threatened to attack both candidates and voters who dared take part, calling polling stations “heathen places.”