After quite cold vibes regarding diplomatic viewpoint between the U.S. and Israel, Israel came forward first to clear the disputes. The two countries had disagreements over the Jewish Settlement near the East Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Barack Obama on Wednesday calling the president an anti-Semite. The speechifying highlighted a week-long spit Israel touched off with the Obama administration when it pronounced during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden about its plans to build 1,600 more homes for Jews near East Jerusalem that angered Palestinians.

During what is seen as one of the tensest periods in U.S.-Israeli ties, Netanyahu had to reserve himself from commentary by his brother-in-law, an ultranationalist, who called the Obama an anti-Semite in a radio interview. “I have a deep admiration for President Obama’s obligation to Israel’s security, which he has expressed many times,” Netanyahu said in a proclamation during the interview. He also renounced himself from all remarks made by Hagai Ben-Artzi, his wife’s brother.

Despite the reprimand, Ben-Artzi reiterated the abuse in an dialogue with Israel’s Channel 2 television, telling a reporter who inquired if he truly considered the U.S. leader was an anti-Semite: “I have thought this for a long time.”

“I had no distrust someone who could sit 20 years with an anti-Semitic minister, who sermonizes the devastation of Israel, had engrossed something,” Ben-Artzi said of Reverend Jeremiah Wright once a mentor of Obama’s, who Obama has since denounced.

“I had expected an outburst (from Obama) and here it was,” Ben-Artzi said of Washington’s objections to the buildings of home. This land Israel captured during 1967 and since then annexed and now plans for more housing territory. Obama administration denounced the plan anticipating it more hatred between the two nations and more terror coming on the way.

While Israel considers all of Jerusalem, including the eastern sector captured 43 years ago, as its capital, the Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their state they hope to set up in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called Israel’s agreement on settlement an insult and hard-pressed it to receive steps to show it was solemn about new peace moves. Clinton took a less challenging tone on Tuesday, telling journalists Washington has “a complete pledge to Israel’s security” and spoke of “a secure unshakeable bond.”

Meanwhile the State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that they were still looking forward for some response from the Prime Minister of Israel and they had not received any. Toner whispered the United States had not set a cut-off date for an Israeli reply, but it is likely Clinton would receive it soon.

Israeli media reports said Clinton wanted Israel to abandon the housing plan and be in agreement to discuss core statehood concerns with the Palestinians once meandering peace talks began. Netanyahu has said he would not restrain building for Jews anyplace in Jerusalem.

Blood was spilled on Tuesday, the third day of mass demonstrations in Bangkok, but not in the way that many had feared. Antigovernment protesters pooled their blood — drawn by medical workers in air-conditioned tents — to unleash a red tide at the gates of Government House, the office of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, and later at his party’s headquarters.

“We will curse them with our blood and our soul!” yelled a protest leader, Nattawut Saikua, to roaring approval from a crowd of several thousand people at Government House, including farmers, monks and vegetable sellers.

Their so-called Red Shirt protest movement remains resentful over the 2006 military coup that ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who championed rural and poorer voters. The movement accuses the current government of favoring the country’s wealthy elite, and has been angered by a series of court decisions in recent years banning political parties allied with Mr. Thaksin.

They want the government to call elections, and with the backing of vast rice-growing areas in the north and northeast of the country, they would have a good shot at winning. Mr. Abhisit, who has nearly two years left in his term, has repeatedly said he will not dissolve Parliament because he does not think it will resolve the political crisis set off by Mr. Thaksin’s ouster.

The Red Shirts continued to occupy the streets of the main government district in Bangkok on Tuesday, though their numbers appears to be down from the more than 100,000 people who crowded the streets on Sunday.

Parliament postponed a scheduled sitting after the majority of the members, including the prime minister, did not show up. Some banks in the neighborhood closed their doors, but most other areas of Bangkok were unaffected by the protests.

The protesters held up the containers of blood like offerings to an angry god before pouring them out. Clumps of coagulated blood clung to the pavement. A Brahmin walked barefoot through the foamy red pools and performed a ceremony. A soldier in full riot gear fainted.

Critics derided the action as a repellent publicity stunt; a government spokesman called it a “photo op.” But the protesters said they were desperate to show their anger at a government that they consider illegitimate.

“To make a monk bleed is one of the worst sins,” said Phol Chanthasaro, a monk in orange robes who stood at the gates of Government House. “I want the government to understand right and wrong.”

Security forces allowed a group of Red Shirts to pass through cordons of soldiers and pour the blood at the entrance to Government House. As the crowd outside the gates shouted “Get Out!” an officer in military uniform, made an announcement on a loudspeaker. “Thank you,” the officer said to the crowd. “We applaud you.”

The Obama administration plans to send a wide-ranging overhaul of the No Child Left Behind education law to Congress on Monday, arguing that the current legislation has pushed schools to lower their standards to meet federal requirements. The 8-year-old law was one of the signature policies of the Bush administration. It set up a regimen of state reading and math tests for students in third through eighth grades, intended to identify failing schools. But critics have said the Bush administration never properly funded the effort and that states needed more flexibility in meeting those goals.

During his weekly radio address Saturday, President Obama said his administration’s proposed overhaul will “set a high bar — but we also provide educators the flexibility to reach it.” “Under these guidelines, schools that achieve excellence or show real progress will be rewarded, and local districts will be encouraged to commit to change in schools that are clearly letting their students down,” he said.During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said the law’s goal was “the right one,” but the legislation “has significant flaws that need to be addressed.” And Education Secretary Arne Duncan told CNN last week that educators have “lowered the bar” to meet No Child Left Behind standards.

“We’ve had low expectations — not because it’s the right thing educationally, not because it’s the right thing for our economy. We did it because of political pressure,” Duncan said. The Department of Education has identified 11 states it said lowered math standards. But several of those states have disputed that conclusion, and it was not clear whether any reduced their standards so that their scores would look better.

The administration’s “Blueprint for Reform” shifts the focus from singling out underperforming schools to fostering a “race to the top” to reward successful reforms. The proposed revisions promise that low-performing schools that fail to improve will be asked to show “dramatic change,” but states and school districts be held accountable for those shortcomings as well.

It supports the expansion of public charter schools and calls for giving states and school districts additional flexibility in how they spend federal dollars, “as long as they are continuing to focus on what matters most — improving outcomes for students.” And it also allows them to use federal grant funds to change the way teachers and principals are paid, “to provide differentiated compensation and career advancement opportunities to educators who are effective in increasing student academic achievement,” among other considerations. But the newly published “blueprint” immediately came under fire from the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, which said it was “disappointed” by Obama’s proposals.

“We were expecting more funding stability to enable states to meet higher expectations,” the union’s president, Dennis Van Roekel, said in a statement issued over the weekend. “Instead, the ‘blueprint’ requires states to compete for critical resources, setting up another winners-and-losers scenario. We were expecting school turnaround efforts to be research-based and fully collaborative. Instead, we see too much top-down scapegoating of teachers and not enough collaboration.” The Obama administration’s $50 billion proposed education budget adds $3 billion in funding to help schools meet these revised goals, with the possibility of an additional $1 billion if the overhaul plan passes Congress.

A settlement that could pay up to $657.5 million to more than 10,000 ground zero rescue and recovery workers sickened by dust from the destroyed World Trade Center goes before a judge Friday, and he has said he favored a settlement but planned to analyze it carefully to make sure it was fair. Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the proposal fair, a sentiment echoed by one of the negotiators of the deal that was announced Thursday night after years of fighting in court.

“I think it’s a good settlement for everybody,” Bloomberg said Friday on his weekly radio show. “This takes care of civilians and uniform service members, it takes care of the private contractors who were brought in. … So I think it’s fair and reasonable given the circumstances. We’ve been working on this for a long time.”

The settlement agreed upon by lawyers representing the city, construction companies and the workers was announced by WTC Captive Insurance Co., a special entity established to indemnify the city and its contractors against potential legal action as they moved to clean up the site after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Both sides were scheduled to appear before the federal judge handling the litigation, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who must approve the deal along with the workers themselves. For the settlement to be enforced, 95 percent of the workers would need to agree to be bound by its terms.

The settlement would mean a postponement or cancellation of the trials tentatively scheduled to begin in May. Some of the cases scheduled to be heard first included that of a firefighter who died of throat cancer and another who needed a lung transplant, as well as workers with less serious ailments, including a Consolidated Edison utility company employee with limited exposure to the debris pile and no current serious illness.

The deal would make the city and other companies represented by the insurer liable for a minimum of $575 million, with more money available to the sick if certain conditions are met. Most if not all of the money would come out of a $1 billion grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Marc Bern, a senior partner with the law firm Worby, Groner, Edelman & Napoli, Bern LLP, which negotiated the deal, said it was “a good settlement.”

Workers who wish to participate in the settlement would need to prove they had been at the World Trade Center site or other facilities that handled debris. They also would have to turn over medical records and provide other information aimed at weeding out fraudulent or dubious claims.

Thousands of police officers, firefighters and construction workers who put in time at the 16-acre site in lower Manhattan had filed lawsuits against the city, claiming it sent them to ground zero without proper protective equipment.

Many now claim to have fallen ill. A majority complained of a respiratory problem similar to asthma, but the suits also sought damages for hundreds of other types of ailments, including cancer.

Lawyers for the city claimed it did its best to get respiratory equipment to everyone who needed it. They also had challenged some of the claims as based on the thinnest of medical evidence, noting that thousands of the people suing suffered from conditions common in the general population or from no illness at all.

Under the settlement, the task of deciding what each worker will be paid will fall to a neutral third party, to be picked by the two sides. Some workers are likely to receive payments of only a few thousand dollars. Others could be in line to get more than $1 million, depending on their injuries.

Carpenter James Nolan, of Yonkers, said he helped recover bodies and build ramps for firehoses at the site and then developed lung and leg problems, for which he takes six medications. He said the city knew the air was dirty so he sued six years ago and now he’s happy the case is ending.”We’ve had to fight for what we deserve,” said Nolan, 45. “I’m glad it’s coming to an end.”

An American woman accused of plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist whose work enraged Muslims has led a checkered and sometimes troubled life, including at least two run-ins with the law before she was indicted on terror-related charges last week.

An indictment unsealed this week revealed that 46-year-old Colleen LaRose who authorities said used the screen name “JihadJane” in Internet posts attempting to recruit jihadis was charged March 4 with providing material support to terrorists. She has been held in a Philadelphia detention center since October, when she was arrested and charged with identity theft.

A person familiar with the matter said Ms. LaRose has been cooperating with authorities since her arrest. She helped prosecutors in their case against seven Muslims in Ireland accused of plotting to kill cartoonist Lars Vilks, this person said. Mr. Vilks’s depictions of the Prophet Muhammad incited protests by Muslims. Law-enforcement officials said Ms. LaRose left the U.S. for Europe in August 2009, intending to train with jihadists and try to kill Mr. Vilks.

Ms. LaRose was born in Michigan and moved to Texas as a child, said a person who knows her. At age 14 she married a man at least twice her age, this person said. She later married another man who has numerous criminal convictions in Texas, court records show.

Ms. LaRose held temporary jobs, the person who knows her said. In Texas, she was arrested for driving under the influence but wasn’t convicted, this person said. In 1997 she was charged in Tom Green County with writing a bad check, a criminal misdemeanor. An arrest warrant for that charge is outstanding.A law-enforcement official said Ms. LaRose appears to have converted to Islam several years ago.

According to a May 2005 incident report, Ms. LaRose’s sister told Pennsburg police Ms. LaRose was threatening suicide. “Colleen was highly intoxicated and having difficulty maintaining her balance,” an officer reported.In 2007, Ms. LaRose, calling herself “Fatima LaRose,” registered a social-networking profile on dailymotion.com. Among videos she posted are what appear to be depictions of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.

Ms. LaRose lived in a second-story unit of a red-brick multifamily residence here in Pennsburg from at least 2003, when police records show she called in a report about two kittens in her yard, until August 2009. Debbie Turner, who works in a real-estate office across from the home, said she saw Ms. LaRose at a local store about a year ago. Ms. LaRose wasn’t covering her face or hair, Ms. Turner said, adding, “Her hair was frizzy and she looked very rough.”

“She was definitely out there,” said Matthew Nelson of Pennsburg, who said Ms. LaRose lived with her former boyfriend Kurt Gorman for about five years. Mr. Gorman is president of a company in Quakertown, Pa., that supplies components to the broadcast industry and where Mr. Nelson is a plant manager. Mr. Nelson said Ms. LaRose disappeared in August, and Mr. Gorman’s passport went missing. The indictment says Ms. LaRose took the U.S. passport of someone identified as “K.G.”Mr. Gorman didn’t return messages seeking comment.

Although investigators don’t believe Ms. LaRose posed an imminent threat and wasn’t plotting an attack in the U.S., she is another in a series of recent cases involving Westerners using the Internet to incite jihad. In June 2008, according to the indictment, she posted a comment on YouTube using the name “JihadJane” and said she was “desperate to do something somehow to help” Muslims. In later messages she described her wish to become a “martyr in the name of Allah,” according to the indictment.

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address was “very troubling” and that the annual speech to Congress has “degenerated into a political pep rally.”Responding to a University of Alabama law student’s question about the Senate’s method of confirming justices, Roberts said senators improperly try to make political points by asking questions they know nominees can’t answer because of judicial ethics rules.

“I think the process is broken down,” he said. Obama chided the court for its campaign finance decision during the January address, with six of the court’s nine justices seated before him in their black robes. Roberts said he wonders whether justices should attend the address.”To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we’re there,” said Roberts, a Republican nominee who joined the court in 2005.Roberts said anyone is free to criticize the court and that some have an obligation to do so because of their positions.

“So I have no problems with that,” he said. “On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum. The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling.”Breaking from tradition, Obama used the speech to criticize the court’s decision that allows corporations and unions to freely spend money to run political ads for or against specific candidates.

“With all due deference to the separation of powers, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama said. Justice Samuel Alito was the only justice to respond at the time, shaking his head and appearing to mouth the words “not true” as Obama continued. In response to Roberts’ remarks Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs focused on the court’s decision and not the chief justice’s point about the time and place for criticism of the court.

“What is troubling is that this decision opened the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections — drowning out the voices of average Americans,” Gibbs said. “The president has long been committed to reducing the undue influence of special interests and their lobbyists over government. That is why he spoke out to condemn the decision and is working with Congress on a legislative response.”

Justice Antonin Scalia once said he no longer goes to the annual speech because the justices “sit there like bumps on a log” in an otherwise highly partisan atmosphere. Roberts opened his appearance in Alabama with a 30-minute lecture on the history of the Supreme Court and became animated as he answered students’ questions. He joked about a recent rumor that he was stepping down from the court and said he didn’t know he wanted to be a lawyer until he was in law school.

While Associate Justice Clarence Thomas told students at Alabama last fall he saw little value in oral arguments before the court, Roberts disagreed.”Maybe it’s because I participated in it a lot as a lawyer,” Roberts said. “I’d hate to think it didn’t matter.”

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday praised Israel for agreeing to renew the Middle East process and pledged that the United States would always “stand by those who take risks for peace.” “Historic peace will require both sides to make historically bold commitments,” said Biden during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden welcomed Netanyahu’s move this week to begin U.S.-mediated indirect talks with the Palestinians and said he hoped it would lead to direct negotiations that would produce a historic peace treaty.

Netanyahu, in pledging to work with Washington to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, repeated a key Israeli condition that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state – a demand they have rejected.He said any peace accord must guarantee Israel’s security “for generations to come”.The vice president arrived on Monday as the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Israel since Barack Obama became president.

“There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security,” Biden said as the two leaders made statements to the media following talks in Jerusalem.This was a message Biden had been widely expected to bring in person from Obama. Israeli political sources have said he is also making clear Washington does not want Israel to risk any military action against Iran while the United States is seeking a wide coalition for sanctions on Tehran.

Netanyahu said Israel’s security priorities were ensuring Iran did not build nuclear weapons and establishing peace with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors.”I very much appreciate the efforts of President Obama and the American government to lead the international community to place tough sanctions on Iran,” he said.

“The stronger those sanctions are, the more likely it will be that the Iranian regime will have to chose between advancing its nuclear program and advancing the future of its own permanence,” added Netanyahu.For his part, Biden declared that the United States was intent on stopping Iran from being able to produce nuclear weapons.

“We’re determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and we’re working with many countries around the world to convince Tehran to meet its international obligations and cease and desist,” he said.Earlier Tuesday, Biden assured President Shimon Peres of Washington’s commitment to its security and said the agreed resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks provided a “moment of real opportunity” for peace.

His visit coincided with Palestinian and Israeli agreement, in meetings with Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell this week, to resume peace talks suspended since December 2008, amid strong skepticism about their chances for success.

“I think we are at a moment of real opportunity,” Biden said at a meeting with President Shimon Peres, the first diplomatic session to be held over the course of his five-day visit. Biden plans to see Palestinian leaders in the West Bank on Wednesday.”The interests of both the Palestinians and the Israeli people, if everyone would just step back and take a deep breath, are actually very much more in line than they are in opposition,” he said.

A strong earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.0, hit eastern Turkey on Monday, killing at least 57 people and knocking down houses in at least six small villages, a government official says. The quake affected villages near the town of Kovancilar, toppling stone or mud-brick homes and minarets of mosques, officials and media reports said. The worst-hit area was the village of Okcular where some 17 people were reported killed and homes crumbled into piles of dirt.

The government’s crisis centre said around 100 people were also injured in the quake, which occurred at 4:32 a.m. local time Monday in Elazig province, about 550 kilometres east of the capital Ankara. It caught many people in their sleep. It was centered near the village of Basyurt, and was followed by more than 30 aftershocks, the strongest measuring 5.5, the Kandilli seismology centre said.

Emergency workers were trying to rescue four people from debris, Gov. Muammer Erol said. CNN-Turk television said the dead included four young sisters trapped in the rubble. Authorities blocked access to Okcular village to facilitate the entry and exit of ambulances and rescue teams on the village’s narrow roads. Relatives rushed to the village for news of their loved ones.”The village is totally flattened,” Okcular’s administrator Hasan Demirdag told private NTV television.

“Everything has been knocked down, there is not a stone in place,” said Yadin Apaydin, administrator for the village of Yukari Kanatli, where he said at least three villagers died. The quake was felt in the neighboring provinces of Tunceli, Bingol and Diyarbakir where residents fled to the streets in panic and spent the night outdoors.

Some of the injuries occurred during the panic, when people jumped from windows or balconies. Dogan news agency footage showed people bringing in the injured to hospitals by cars and taxis. Kandilli Observatory’s director, Mustafa Erdik, urged residents not to enter damaged homes, warning that they could topple from the aftershocks, which could last for days.

Television footage showed rescue workers and soldiers at Okcular lifting debris as villagers looked on. Rescuers could be seen digging into dirt and then removing an elderly man. The man had died and his body was quickly covered with a sheet. Two women sat on mattresses wrapped in blankets. Turkey’s Red Crescent organization began setting up tents in the region.

Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, much of which lies on top of the North Anatolian fault. In 1999, two powerful earthquakes struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18,000 people. In 2007, an earthquake measuring 5.7 damaged buildings in Elazig, briefly trapping a woman under debris. In 2003, an earthquake measuring 6.4 in magnitude collapsed a school dormitory in the neighboring province of Bingol province, killing 83 children. The collapse was blamed on poor construction.

John Patrick Bedell was an independent-minded and skeptical teenager bright and questioning, with strongly held opinions, like countless other young people, his brother remembered Saturday.Bedell, who went by Patrick, had vigorously objected to the 1991 Persian Gulf War since high school, telling relatives that the United States was trying to enrich itself and oil companies, said his brother, 33-year-old Jeffrey Bedell.

In 2002, after the breakup of a four-year relationship with a girlfriend, his skepticism began to turn to deep-rooted suspicion. Soon it became paranoia, his brother said.Patrick Bedell would point skyward, convinced that “they” were watching him. He believed songs he heard on the radio were meant as warnings. The Bedell family and close friends tried to seek medical help for him, but he refused, convinced that he was privy to information that warranted his mindset.

No one knows why Patrick Bedell, 36, traveled across the country from his parents’ home in Hollister and opened fire Thursday at the entrance to the Pentagon, injuring two police officers. But these accumulating moments of paranoia in the early 2000s appear to signal the time when he started on the course that would end with him shot and killed by Pentagon police.

“There were symptoms of a mental disorder, approaching paranoid schizophrenia,” said Jeffrey Bedell, a former California deputy attorney general who is a financial adviser. “I can only imagine the terror in his own mind. He believed there were people who meant to do him harm.”

Patrick Bedell was perpetually in and out of school, enrolling in undergraduate or graduate programs and sometimes auditing courses. In 1999, the brothers lived together in Berkeley, when Jeffrey Bedell was a senior on his way to law school and Patrick Bedell was auditing a physics course. “It was fantastic. We would go to the café, and I’d be studying, he’d be studying.It was wonderful,” Jeffrey Bedell said.

The brothers parted ways when Patrick Bedell moved to Austin to live with a woman he met at a bookstore at the University of California at Davis. Jeffrey Bedell didn’t want to name the woman, who he said was pursuing a graduate degree in literature. “I think she appreciated his intelligence. He was charming and very funny, and he was very kind and considerate,” Jeffrey Bedell said. “It was fantastic to go out with them. I dearly love her.”

But Patrick Bedell’s curiosity and skepticism changed to an off-putting perspective laden with conspiracy theories. He smoked marijuana frequently. The Bedells pleaded with him to seek medical help, but he refused. “I would have conversations with him, trying to convince him to stop smoking marijuana, that it was making his thinking more disordered,” Jeffrey Bedell said. “He would come back to a familiar theme: ‘If you knew what I knew.’\u2009″

Jeffrey Bedell said he was having dinner Thursday at home in Sacramento when his father called and told him to turn on the news.”He said, ‘Your brother has fired shots at the Pentagon,’\u2009″ said Jeffrey Bedell. “I turned on the television, and I called George Washington’s hospital and spoke to an FBI agent and doctor. The doctor told me he ‘expired.’ He said they did everything they could, but that when he was brought to the hospital, he was not physiologically alive.”

Iraqis go to the polls on Sunday to elect the members of parliament who will, if all goes according to plan, help complete the transition of power and security from the U.S. military back into Iraqi hands. The stakes are as high as they’ve ever been — and not just for Iraqis and their politicians. How smoothly the voting goes, and its results, will have direct implications for the Obama administration’s goals of drawing down U.S. combat troops by September, and getting all troops out of the country by the end of this year.

Mr. Obama isn’t the first American president with hopes of reducing the U.S. military presence in Iraq by trying to support and foster a stable, democratically elected government — a government able to protect its own and deliver basic services. But U.S. foreign policy is littered with failed attempts.

Iraq’s population remains largely divided along sectarian lines, with Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations resoundingly backing politicians of the same ethnicity. As the U.S. and the United Nations aim to keep their role in the vote low-key, there is uncertainty about how far the elections can go toward ending those divisions and accomplishing the goals stated above.

Almost 19 million Iraqis are eligible to vote, and security on election day — the perception of security on election day — will be essential to drawing battle-scarred residents out of their homes to cast votes. More than 6,000 candidates are contesting 325 seats in Iraq’s Parliament, and the makeup of that body is essential as Parliament chooses the Iraqi Prime Minister.

Deadly suicide bombings have increased in the lead-up to the elections and militias continue to intimidate voters. The same militants may try to promote civil strife in the aftermath of the voting. The U.N.’s role in the vote is dictated by a Security Council Resolution which requires the world body to advise the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) and to work with Iraq’s political leaders to prepare for elections, but the U.N. will not be monitoring the elections.

“Monitoring is done by other parties; since the U.N. provided technical support for the elections, we couldn’t credibly monitor them (which would, in effect, amount to monitoring ourselves),” Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the Secretary General tells CBS News.

Some of the biggest controversies took place before campaigning even began, with the selection — and disqualification — of candidates. Many were removed from the ballot because of links to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. In response to criticism, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki planned to bring 20,000 Hussein-era military officers into the Iraqi Armed Forces.

The U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Iraq, Ad Melkert, briefed the Security Council last month on the controversial “de-Baathification” process, saying the U.N. Mission in Iraq has consistently emphasized the due-process requirements and refrained from judging the outcomes.

“What will matter most is the acceptance by the Iraqi people of the election result,” Melkert said. The Security Council is playing a role by laying the groundwork to lift sanctions imposed under Saddam’s rule.The greatest fear, both in Iraq and for the Obama Administration, is that elections could divide, rather than unite the country. There is little question, however, that the country is engaged in the campaign.

In a nation where providing even the most basic services has been a huge challenge since the war, it is remarkable the level to which candidates in this election have taken their campaigns abruptly into the 21st century. Many are taking full advantage of social networking sites, with individual candidates and political coalitions offering information on their platforms to anyone with access.

The strongest among the coalitions are: the State of Law coalition led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; the Iraqi National Alliance, a Shiite coalition which includes supporters of powerful anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari; and the Iraqi Nationalist Movement (al-Iraqiyya), which includes former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. There are also Kurdish alliances and significant tribal coalitions in play.

Violence is the greatest threat to the election; the Associated Press calculates a 44 percent increase in Iraqis killed in military conflict between January and February, made up largely of civilians.

The Obama Administration is banking on an election with enough U.N. support, reasonable transparency and political unity to keep the 20 percent minority Sunni population, the tribal groups, and the Kurds in government alongside the Shiite majority. If that happens, and Iraq’s relative, fragile stability remains in tact and growing, then Mr. Obama’s aspirations for withdrawal will also live to see another day.