Two Iraqi Kurdish politicians say Iraq's President Jalal Talabani has undergone heart surgery in a US hospital. The two senior officials from Talabani's party say the eight-hour surgery took place at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, on August 6, and that it was successful. The politicians spoke on Thursday on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to release the information. They say Talabani is in good condition and is expected to leave the hospital on Saturday. They did not say why Talabani needed heart surgery. The 74-year-old Iraqi leader flew to the U.S. on August 2, for what his office at the time said was an operation on Talabani's left knee. Mayo Clinic spokesman Bryan Anderson said that at Talabani's request, the clinic has no comment. Meanwhile, the names of 100,000 foreigners were found on voter registration rolls used in previous elections but have since been removed, an election official said Thursday. The names were discovered during examinations of registration rolls in preparation for provincial balloting which is supposed to take place later this year. “We have omitted 100,000 names of foreigners who have been living in Iraq and were registered in the voters' list,” Faraj al-Haidari, a senior official of the Independent Election Commission, told the Associated Press. He said that it is uncertain whether any of the foreigners, mostly from other Arab countries, voted in any of the three elections held since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003. There had been complaints of fraud and voter irregularities during those elections.
