Campaigning for the December 15 parliamentary election has not focused much on the US-led occupation, but one finding of a survey of dozens of voters by Reuters was the desire for foreign troops to leave the country.

In the campaign, it has been some Sunni Arab minority parties who, in common with rebel groups from the once-dominant Sunni community, have made foreign troop withdrawal a prime demand.

Other politicians, however, know they need US soldiers to stop the Sunni-led insurgency tipping Iraq into civil war, but many of their constituents think the troops make matters worse.

"The occupation forces should withdraw so that we can feel secure. Every day I feel panic when I go to college due to blasts and random shootings," said Israa Mohammad, a 22-year-old student interviewed on the campus of Baghdad University.

That view was reflected in the survey of voters in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Basra, Hilla and Najaf in which more people chose the withdrawal of foreign troops as the priority for next year than chose a more general wish for security.

Animosity toward US, British and other Coalition soldiers, whom many Iraqis have come to see as contributing to rather than halting violence, underscores Washing-ton's failure to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis 30 months after invading.

It also chimes with growing unpopularity over the war back in the United States.

In the Reuters survey, 59 of the 131 people who indicated a preference said that the withdrawal of foreign troops was the most pressing priority for the next government.

In violence unidentified gunmen killed a parliamentary candidate and an Iraqi police commander in separate attacks yesterday while a bomb that detonated as a police patrol passed through central Baghdad killed three civilians, police said.