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Kuwaiti women urged to register to vote despite ban

KUWAIT: Kuwaiti women activists have urged fellow women to register as voters although the elected parliament has twice rejected granting them political rights.

Sheikha al-Nisf, head of a women's cultural society, called on Kuwaiti women to register when registration opens next month for eligible male voters "to pressure parliament and the authorities to amend the election law," daily al-Seyassah reported on Sunday.

The Interior Ministry on Saturday issued lists for centres in the Moslem conservative state's 25 constituencies for eligible males to register as voters in an annual event.

Authorities are expected to stop women from seeking to register as voters.

In November, mainly Islamist and traditional tribal MPs rejected by two votes a draft law in the all-male parliament which would have granted women the right to vote and run in the next scheduled polls in 2003 and register as of this February.

After dissolving parliament in May, Emir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah issued a revolutionary decree granting women full political rights -- a move warmly welcomed and supported by Kuwait's main Western political and military allies.

But parliament rejected the decree after general elections in July. Some 80 percent of 113,000 eligible male voters went to the polls.

Kuwait is the only Gulf Arab state with an elected parliament which also enjoys wide powers, including the ability to force the non-elected government to resign.

Kuwaiti women, about half of some 800,000 Kuwaitis, are seen as the most liberal in the Gulf Arab region. They hold senior government posts, run diplomatic missions and newspapers, and help steer the country's vital oil industry.-Reuters