Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority insists that elections, set for Jan. 30, must be held on schedule. The Sunni Arab minority demands that the vote be postponed. The Kurds also wouldn’t mind a delay but are willing to go with the flow and seem to be playing both sides. And Prime Minister Iyad Allawi? Although he says he’s “determined” to have the elections on time, the top man in the U.S.-backed interim government is sympathetic to — some say eager for — a postponement. “This is Iraqi politics,” said Jaber Habib, a political science professor at Baghdad University, chuckling at the surfeit of competing agendas and political double-speak. “In our own way, this is normal.” The swirling debate about whether to conduct the parliamentary elections as scheduled despite a simmering insurgency underscores the ethnic, political and religious complexities of the modern Iraqi state. Full Story