At Condoleezza Rice's swearing-in Friday as his new secretary of state, President Bush said: "The advent of democracy in Iraq will serve as a powerful example to reformers throughout the entire Middle East."

He noted that Afghans, Ukrainians and Palestinians have all held elections. "Freedom is on the march, and the world is better for it," Bush declared.

Gaza City resident Hassan Sarhan didn't buy it.

"You can't have free and fair elections under occupation. They simply don't mean anything," he said. "This election is being forced by the Americans so they can say to the world, 'Look, we've brought democracy to Iraq. We're brought freedom to the Iraqi people.' It's all a sham."

In Beirut, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's most senior Shiite cleric, told The Associated Press: "It is difficult to hold free and honest elections in Iraq under the shadow of U.S. occupation."

Loud misgivings also were heard in Europe, where many countries opposed the U.S.-led invasion.

For many here, the war in Iraq started as a disaster built on faulty premises -- that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction -- and has only succeeded in encouraging terrorists and sullying the image of Western democracies in the Muslim world.

"Terrorist attacks are Baghdad's daily bread. People are scared to go to the polls. Terrorists and followers of Saddam Hussein can only benefit from the volatile situation," said the MF Dnes newspaper in the Czech Republic, where lawmakers this week agreed to keep Czech troops in Iraq until the year's end.

Iraqi voters will choose a National Assembly that will govern the country and draft a permanent constitution, as well as provincial councils in the 18 provinces. Those living in the Kurdish self-governing region of the north will also choose a regional parliament.

Iraqi police and soldiers will play the more visible role, manning checkpoints and securing the polls -- many of which have already been bombed and rocketed by insurgents ahead of Sunday's vote. But American troops will be around -- backing up the Iraqis in the event of major violence the Iraqis can't handle, U.S. and Iraqi commanders said.

In Britain, where anger over Prime Minister Tony Blair's support for U.S. efforts in Iraq remains high, media coverage has focused as much on Iraq's insurgents and their incessant attacks as on Sunday's vote.

"Is the world safer now?" asked a front-page headline in The Independent above pictures of the shell of a car used in a suicide attack.

Columnist Rupert Cornwell called Bush's comment this week that the "flag of liberty" was being planted in Iraq a "typical flourish of high-flown rhetoric."

"Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place," he wrote. "And will continue to do so."

Britain's ambassador to France, writing in the French daily Le Monde, argued that skeptics are missing the point.

"What needs to be seen in the Iraqi elections are not the difficulties that surround them, but quite simply the fact that they are taking place," wrote Sir John Holmes.

On the streets of Paris, a quick survey of seven passers-by turned up four firmly in favor of the vote -- surprising given France's distaste for Bush, the Iraq invasion and wider U.S. policies.

"It's a very good thing," Olivier Baudry, 30, said. "But at the same time I don't think it's possible to export democracy from one country to another like that. It's a bit paradoxical to have to impose democracy by authoritarian means."

In the United States, some newspapers preferred to see the vote through the prism of history, not pessimism.

"Getting Ready for Democracy" said the front-page of The Times of Munster in Indiana.

"Working against thousands of years of cultural differences and resentment, the U.S. sponsored Iraqi elections will be BREAKING HISTORY," declared the Savannah Morning News in Georgia.

Contrast that with "The Iraq disaster" headline above a commentary in the German Sueddeutsche Zeitung that argued that Bush's promises to spread democracy have backfired terribly.

Iraq "threatens to sink into murderous anarchy," it said last week. "The election cannot bring the Iraqis democracy because all the conditions are missing, because freedom can't prosper on the battlefields."

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Associated Press Writers Lara Sukhtian in Gaza City, Matt Surman in Berlin, Kate Brumback and Mikael G. Holter in Paris and Hussein Dakroub in Lebanon contributed to this report