Sweden - Dozens of demonstrators on Tuesday rallied near the Iraqi Embassy and on a downtown square in Stockholm to protest a referendum in Iraq on extending Saddam Hussein's presidency.

Saddam faces no challenger in Tuesday's referendum, but the government is seeking the highest percentage of "yes" votes to prove the leader's popularity as a rebuke to the United States. In 1995, 99.96 percent of voters cast "yes" votes.

"We hereby condemn this joke that is being called an election and urge our Iraqi compatriots to refuse to accept it," Gazi Ferman, an Iraqi Kurd organizing the protest on Sergels Torg square, told the crowd.
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"All Iraqi people are against the Baghdad regime, this is just a false referendum," said one of the protesters, who called himself Salam Ahmed. He declined to give his real name for fear of retaliation.

"Nobody in Iraq dares to say no. People disappear if they show just a little of what they think of the regime," he said

» Swedish Iraqi groups protest referendum on extending Saddam Hussein's presidency