CARLOS VALENZUELA cuts a lonely figure in his airless Baghdad office, where he leads a skeleton United Nations team trying to organise Iraq’s elections in the face of almost insurmountable odds.

With only four months to go before polls are due to open, the Colombian election expert and seven UN staff are expected to finalise an electoral roll, print millions of ballot papers and organise the training of thousands of election officers.

Even in a benign atmosphere, bringing democracy to Iraq after decades of dictatorship would be difficult enough. Now even Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, has raised doubts that “credible elections” can be held. Militant groups have threatened to boycott the polls and will almost certainly use violence to sabotage the elections.

Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi Prime Minister, will appeal to the UN General Assembly for more international assistance this week. While many are sympathetic to Iraq’s plight, no one is expecting significant help from an international community upset by the chaos of postwar Iraq.

Señor Valenzuela, a veteran of other tough elections, such as in East Timor, where he had nearly 500 staff to help him run an election for 700,000 people, responds to the situation with a wry smile.

“Everything is being rushed and pushed. The plan that we have is very tight, but it is do-able,” he said, raising his voice to overcome the sound of a mortar bomb exploding near by and the clatter of US tanks and helicopters outside. “It is a difficult task, but not impossible. I was not for the war, but it happened and it would be petty not to help. We have a responsibility to support this country.”

Already Iraq’s Independent Electoral Commission, which is in charge of organising the polls, can claim some successes. It has drawn up the outline of an electoral register, adapted from the country’s food rationing database, and is thought to cover about 85 per cent of the population.

In the next phase, Iraqis are being taken to Jordan for training as electoral officers, the first of an estimated 6,000 volunteers who must be ready by election day at the end of January, when up to 15 million Iraqis will be able to cast their votes in 600 polling stations.

So far the commission’s work has been largely behind the scenes, but, from early November, it will launch a public information campaign to explain to Iraqis the mechanics of voting. At this point the election is likely to dominate Iraqi politics and the real test will begin.

The Kurds in the north, who have enjoyed democracy for the past decade, and the majority Shia Muslims in the south, are expected to participate. The voting system being adopted here is a form of proportional representation used in the Netherlands and Israel, where there are no constituencies. Candidates appear on party lists and seats in the 275-member assembly will be won by securing a proportion of the nationwide vote. The strength of the system is that however low the turnout is, there will still be a result.

The biggest hurdle is the likely resistance from central Iraq, the heartland of Sunni Muslims, who for centuries have been the ruling class. The Association of Muslim Scholars, the main Sunni religious authority, has criticised the polls, insisting that “honest elections are impossible” while the country remains under “military occupation”.

US officials in Baghdad have already conceded that flashpoints, such as the rebel stronghold of Fallujah, may have to be exempted from the polls.

“I believe elections will take place. I believe Iraqis desire honest elections. But I don’t know if they will get them,” one American official involved in the process said.

Undeterred by the threat of violence, Iraqis queued up yesterday to volunteer as electoral officers. Ahmad Muhammad, a former Iraqi Airways pilot, said that the country desperately needed democracy after 40 years of dictatorial rule, and that he needed a job.

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