Election "Monitoring"

Here's a first--election monitors for the January 30th Iraqi vote will observe--from Jordan:

Representatives of seven nations met in Ottawa this week to recruit international observers for the Iraqi elections and agreed to watch the vote, but from the safety of Amman, Jordan.

They said it was too dangerous to monitor the voting in Iraq, meaning international observers are unlikely for the elections on Jan. 30 - making them the first significant vote of this sort recently with no foreign presence, United Nations officials say.

Now, given that three Iraqi election workers were murdered in broad daylight recently, you can't really blame them.