BAGHDAD, Iraq – Offering the most pessimistic official assessment yet of Iraqi security heading into elections, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Tuesday that some communities likely would not be safe enough to hold voting Jan. 30.

Allawi’s comments, made as part of a law-and-order campaign address, came as insurgent attacks killed more than a dozen Iraqis.

The White House said that President Bush talked with Allawi by telephone and that both men affirmed the importance of holding the vote as scheduled. Allawi characterized the most violent sections of Iraq as pockets and predicted that those areas excluded from the elections would be limited.

He also pledged to increase the Iraqi army to 150,000 soldiers by year’s end from the nearly 100,000 men and women now in uniform.

“In reality, there is not a single task that’s bigger or more important to the government than to create an army and internal security forces that guarantee us a safe life immune from fear,” Allawi said, unveiling a $2.2 billion security blueprint for 2005.

“Our vision for the Iraqi armed forces is a smaller army, well-equipped and fully trained,” he told a small gathering of police and army officers as well as a few reporters.

An insurgent campaign of attacks and assassinations has killed hundreds of police, soldiers and government officials and sent some electoral workers into hiding weeks before the vote. Some officials have quit. Others have threatened to resign if security does not approve.

Diyala Gov. Abdullah al-Jubouri has been a stalwart, facing down two assassination attempts and insisting that elections go ahead in his province northeast of Baghdad. But on Tuesday, al-Jubouri announced his resignation, only to later withdraw it and say he would stay in office.

Al-Jubouri spoke to provincial leaders who gathered in Baqouba to discuss the future of people from the province who were displaced in Saddam Hussein’s campaign in the 1970s and ‘80s to remove Kurds from the area.

Later in the day, hundreds of supporters marched on the governor’s house in nearby Muqdadiya and refused to accept his resignation. Al-Jubouri said he reconsidered after the demonstration and told the people who gathered that he would remain as governor.

Al-Jubouri said in an interview at the 1st Infantry Division’s military base in Baqouba that he is frustrated by a lack of support from the interim government in Baghdad and what he said is an influx of Kurds moving into Diyala province at the urging of Kurdish leaders in Sulaymaniyah.

“Frankly speaking, we really don’t get any support at all from the interim government in Baghdad,” al-Jubouri said. “For the most basic things, either myself or my deputies have to go to Baghdad to ask for it. Sometimes some of these ministers won’t even see my deputies.”

Al-Jubouri also said hundreds of police officers in the province have not been paid by the Interior Ministry in two months, and the interim government has failed to support significant construction projects. Almost all of the improvement of infrastructure has come through funding from the U.S.-led coalition.

The announcement of the resignation caused a brief wave of anxiety from U.S. Army commanders stationed in Diyala. They have worked closely with al-Jubouri, a moderate Sunni who spent nearly 20 years in exile in Manchester, England.

“We need you to stay and work with us,” Col. Dana Pittard of the 1st Infantry’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team told al-Jubouri.

In Tikrit, six Iraqi police officers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near the provincial police station, Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, said. The general said officers were standing across the street from the police station when they were targeted.

With more blast barriers being built around headquarters for Iraqi security forces, Batiste said suicide bombers seem to have adjusted their tactics and are searching for more vulnerable targets.

“These guys were huddled in a group,” Batiste said.

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(Madhani reported from Baqouba, McMahon from Baghdad.)

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(c) 2005, Chicago Tribune.

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AP-NY-01-11-05 2108EST