Bombing outside shrine kills seven as campaigning for election begins

Wednesday was the final day for candidates to register for Jan. elections.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A bomb targeting a prominent Shiite cleric killed seven people outside one of southern Iraq's holiest shrines Wednesday as campaigning began for Iraq's first post-Saddam elections -- a vote that is going ahead despite suicide attacks and assassinations by Sunni insurgents.
The attack in the heartland of Iraqi's majority Shiite population wounded the cleric, Sheik Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalayee, and was a stark reminder of the risks for the six-week campaign leading to a Jan. 30 vote for a 275-member National Assembly. Unlike most Western countries where election campaigns kick off with media blitzes and rallies, there was little fanfare in Iraq, particularly in the capital, where many fear large gatherings in public places could be invitations for militant attacks.
The campaigning began as a government official said Saddam Hussein's notorious right-hand man, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," will be the first among 12 former regime members to appear at an initial investigative court hearing next week to face charges for crimes allegedly committed during Saddam's 35-year dictatorship.
Formal indictments could be issued next month -- just ahead of the elections.
Key candidates
On the final day of candidate registration, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite and Washington favorite, announced his 240-member list of candidates, pitting him against the slate embraced by Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. About 90 parties and political movements have applied to be represented on ballots.
Heading the al-Sistani-backed United Iraqi Alliance list is Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution and chief of its armed wing, the Iran-based Badr Brigade, during Saddam's rule.
With the threatened Sunni boycott, the lists submitted make Allawi and al-Hakim the leading contenders to take top jobs in Iraq's next government. In the election, each faction will win a number of seats in the assembly proportional to the percentage of votes it gets nationwide -- meaning the highest-listed candidates on each roster are most likely to be elected. The groups ending up strongest in the assembly will be in a powerful position as the body will elect a president and two deputies, who will nominate the prime minister. The assembly will also draw up a new constitution.
Poll makeup
Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million population and are expected to dominate the polls. Such an outcome worries some secular Shiites here, along with neighboring Sunni-dominated countries and the United States, who are wary of a Shiite-run Iraq growing closer to its eastern neighbor, Iran.
"Iran will not be indifferent to Iraq's future and it cannot ignore the country because any developments there would have an impact on the internal affairs of Iran," Hasan Kazemi Qomi, Iran's top diplomat in Baghdad, told his country's official Islamic Republic News Agency.
In a move likely to inflame election tensions, Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan accused Iran and Syria of cooperating with former Saddam security operatives and Iraq's top terror figure, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Iran, Shaalan said, is the "No. 1 enemy."
"They are fighting us because we want to build freedom and democracy and they want to build an Islamic dictatorship and have turbaned clerics to rule in Iraq," the defense minister said.