Dec 20, 2005

BAGHDAD (AP) - Sunni Arabs on Tuesday protested the partial election results released a day earlier, calling them a "falsification of the will of the people" and saying evidence of fraud was abundant.

Sunni Arab officials suggested that the country's security and stability were at stake if their complaints about last week's parliamentary vote were not addressed. Officials concentrated their protests on results from Baghdad province, the country's biggest electoral district.

Election officials said the United Iraqi Alliance - a Shiite party - took about 59 per cent of the vote from 89 per cent of ballot boxes counted in Baghdad province. The Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance Front received about 19 per cent, and the Iraqi National List headed by Ayad Allawi, a secular-minded Shiite, got about 14 per cent.

Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Iraqi Accordance Front, a coalition of three major Sunni Arab groups, said his party of Sunni Arabs rejected those results. The party said officials still had time to correct any mistakes, but if that wasn't done the results would be "grave repercussions on security and political stability."

If no measure are taken, al-Dulaimi said, "then we will demand that the elections be held again in Baghdad . . . . If this demand is not met, then we will resort to other measures."

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, acknowledged Tuesday that there had been 20 "red" - or serious - complaints as of Monday that could affect the vote outcome.

"Final results will not be announced until those red complaints are looked at," he said.

Elsewhere, Mahmoud Ziyadat, a driver for Jordan's embassy, was kidnapped after his car was "intercepted" by three vehicles as he was driving to work Tuesday morning, Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Judeh said in Amman.

Gunmen, meanwhile, killed two police officers in Baqouba, 60 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, Diyalaa police said.

Preliminary election returns showed Iraqi voters divided along ethnic and religious lines with a commanding lead held by the religious Shiite coalition that dominates the current government.

The preliminary results for the 275-member parliament from 11 provinces showed the United Iraqi Alliance winning strong majorities in Baghdad and largely Shiite provinces in the south.

Kurdish parties were overwhelmingly ahead in their three northern provinces, while results from one of the four predominantly Sunni Arab provinces, Salahuddin, showed the Sunni Arab minority winning an overwhelming majority.

Early vote tallies suggested disappointing results for a secular party led by Allawi, a former prime minister and a U.S. favourite who hoped to bridge the often violent divide that has emerged between followers of rival branches of Islam since the fall of Saddam.

As expected, religious groups, both Shiite and Sunni, were leading in many areas - an indication that Iraqis may have grown more religious or conservative.

Still, the ruling Shiite coalition - known as the United Iraqi Alliance - was unlikely to win the two-thirds majority, or at least 184 seats, needed to avoid a coalition with other parties.

A senior official in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the main groups in the United Iraqi Alliance, said the alliance was expecting to get about 130 seats.

The alliance is headed by cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of the most powerful figures in the country.

"It's going to be 'Let's Make a Deal,' " said Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The important thing in some ways was that there was a large vote. The concerns that it would fall along ethnic and sectarian lines were validated."

U.S. officials hope a coalition government involving Sunni Arabs will weaken a Sunni-led insurgency. Sunnis, a minority group favoured under Saddam, voted heavily on Thursday after boycotting earlier elections.

© The Canadian Press, 2005