Iraqi Ambassador Lukman Faily said April 23 that parliamentary elections scheduled next week are unlikely to produce a majority for any one party and that the United States retains considerable influence in Iraq despite the withdrawal two years ago of all American combat troops.

Faily, speaking to Al-Monitor a day after completing the Boston Marathon, said Iraqis have a different “concept of time” than Westerners and suggested that the elections could also help clarify nagging divisions that have undermined Iraqi unity, such as the distribution of oil revenues among Iraqi regions and provinces.

In the run-up to elections, stories in US media about Iraq have been almost universally gloomy, stressing the danger of the country dissolving back into civil war following the entrenchment of religious extremists in predominantly Sunni Anbar province, an epidemic of suicide bombings directed against Shiites and growing separatist tendencies in the northern Kurdish area. Nearly 8,000 civilians died last year and more than 2,500 people have been killed since January — tolls not seen since Americans were fighting in Iraq in 2008.

Faily, a British-educated mathematician of Kurdish origin who previously served as Iraq’s ambassador to Japan, did not minimize the challenges. However, he pointed out that some 9,000 people are running for 328 seats in parliament — an increase in candidates since the last elections in 2010 — and said that participation was expected to be around 60%. To prevent the disenfranchisement of Sunnis — which diminished the legitimacy of Iraq’s 2005 elections, boycotted by many Sunnis — the nearly 400,000 residents of Anbar who have fled their homes since fighting broke out there in December will be permitted to vote in neighboring provinces, Faily said.