BAGHDAD, December 30 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The US forces and Iraqi government are putting the final touches on a security plan to guard an estimated 9,000 polling centers on the election day, exactly one month from now.

“It is nearly complete and will be final as soon as it is presented to and approved by the (Iraqi) prime minister,” said Brigadier General Erv Lessel, the US-led forces' deputy director of operations.

He claimed that US forces would be relegated to a “supporting role,” providing “quick reaction forces and back up forces to Iraqi security forces,” reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The plan will see the deployment of thousands of Iraqi forces on the streets, already marred by chaos and lawlessness.

“About 100,000 police and national guard will be mobilized” across the country, said Adel Lami, a ranking officer on Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission.

Lessel said Iraqi police and national guard will form an inner and outer ring around polling centers and their surrounding neighborhoods where people would be searched before allowed access.

He stressed that cars will be banned from the sealed-off zones in a bid to prevent bombings.

An Iraqi policemen told IslamOnline.net Sunday, December 19, on condition of anonymity, that it was impossible to provide security to the 9,000 ballots stretching across the country.

On the same day, three elections staffers were killed by six gunmen armed with Ak-47 assault rifles and pistols who dragged them out from the vehicles and shot them dead in central Baghdad.

A boy rides his bicycle past billboards advertising the January vote. (AFP)

Lessel expected Iraqi fighters to “make attempts to try to disrupt the process” by attacking election officials, citizens and candidates.

The military official said US forces will “ramp up” their operations ahead of the January 30 vote.

“In the areas where there are security concerns, Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul, we are taking active, positive steps to go on the offensive against the insurgents to help create the security environment necessary to have... elections in those cities.”

An extra 5,000 US occupation troops have been deployed in Baghdad, boosting the number of soldiers to 34,000 in the nation's capital, US Brigadier General Jeffrey Hammond told reporters Tuesday.

The top US commander for the Middle East, General John Abizaid, said force numbers could also be boosted between 6,000 to 8,000 in Mosul.

Representatives of several Iraqi parties and leading political figures have been campaigning for a six-month delay of the vote over the increasing deteriorating security conditions.

UN Iraqi envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned that holding the elections would be impossible unless “first and foremost security improves.”

On Sunday, December 19, Britain’s The Independent expected the Iraqi elections to be one of the most secretive in history.

It recalled that, terrified of the unabated attacks, interim premier Iyad Allawi huddled himself in the US heavily protected Green Zone in Baghdad to announce his slate of candidates elections.

The Iraqi voters are to choose a 275-member assembly, which will be entrusted to write a permanent constitution.

If adopted in a referendum next year, the constitution would form the legal basis for another general elections to be held by December, 2005.