US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday raised the possibility that some areas of Iraq might be excluded from elections scheduled for January if security could not be guaranteed.‘‘If there were to be an area where the extremists focused during the election period, and an election was not possible in that area at that time, so be it. You have the rest of the election and you go on. Life’s not perfect,’’ Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee.Rumsfeld testified just hours after Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and US President George W. Bush both insisted national elections would be held on schedule in January despite the flaring insurgency.UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has suggested elections may have to be delayed because of security concerns. Rumsfeld said the January target for elections was plausible because the Iraqis ‘‘have met every single benchmark politically’’ since the transfer of sovereignty in June.Allawi was in Washington amid rising violence in Iraq. Pressed by senators on whether there were sufficient troops to face down the insurgency, Rumsfeld said Gen John Abizaid, the top US commander in the region, might decide he needed extra forces, as he had requested the 700 to 1,000 extra US airborne troops headed for Afghanistan before its October 9 election. —Reuters
