BAGHDAD, (Reuters):
IRAQ'S RULING Shi'ite Islamists, at odds with Washington over human rights and ties to Iran, may hold on to a slim parlia-mentary majority despite a big turnout by minority Sunnis, partial election results showed yesterday.
At any rate it will be by far the biggest party.
Leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance, whose performance in government has been criticised by U.S. officials and by Sunni Arab rebels who accuse them of backing sectarian militias, said they would start informal talks on Tuesday with Sunnis, Kurds and other groups to try to form a national unity coalition.
In Baghdad, the biggest of Iraq's 18 provinces and accounting for 59 of 230 parliamentary seats allocated by regional ballots, the Alliance won 58 per cent in Thursday's election with 89 per cent of the vote counted, the Electoral Commission said.
Though comparative data from January's vote, boycotted by Sunnis, were not available, the result showed its resilience in the capital, where Sunnis and secular groups are strong.
Results from nine other provinces where the bulk of the vote had been counted showed the Alliance dominant again in the southern Shi'ite heartlands -- in poor Maysan, for example, it outscored by more than 20 times the second-placed Iraqi National List led by secular former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
In a nation polarised on sectarian and ethnic lines, voters had been expected to rally to parties posing as strong champions of their interests; calls from cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to avoid splitting the Shi'ite vote may, although not a direct endorsement, have helped the Alliance resist defections and the effect of disillusionment with continued insecurity and poverty.
A further 45 seats will be allocated according to shares of the national vote. Several officials from rival political groups said they also expected the Alliance to win comfortably more than 40 percent of the seats in the 275-member Council of Representatives, and possibly retain its slim majority.
"It seems we have between 120 and 140 seats in total," senior Alliance official Abbas al-Bayati told Reuters. "We don't think that the official results will be very different."
PREMIER AMBITIONS
The Electoral Commission has said preliminary results should come out this week but the checking of complaints was likely to delay a final tally for about two weeks.
After the January election for the current interim assembly, the Alliance controls about 140 seats and secured the two-thirds majority needed to appoint a president and make constitutional changes by forming a coalition with the Kurdish bloc.
Saad Qandeel, a senior member of SCIRI, said the results would reinforce the Alliance's determination to nominate a prime minister from its own ranks even if it goes into a broader coalition: "We ... will announce names soon," he said.
Abdul Hadi al-Zubaidi, from the Sunni Islamist-led Iraqi Accordance Front, said he expected the Alliance to get about 110 seats and the Front was ready to discuss a deal: "There might be a coalition between the Shi'ite Alliance and the Accordance Front, there are already talks but soon it will be clearer."
Looking at coalition options, Bayati said: "We have had a coalition with the Kurdish bloc and we will work on that."
But he added: "We will work on forming a national unity government where everyone is represented, regardless of the number of seats they have got in the parliament.
"We will be open to all lists. We want a strong government which is capable of serving the citizens."
A senior Kurdish official said that a three or four-way talks would begin in the coming days among leaders from among Sunni Arabs, Shi'ites, Kurds and Allawi's secular list; but negotiations on any coalition would be complex:
"We want the Iraqi people to find peace -- the big parties should agree and unite in parliament for the good of the Iraqi people," the Accordance Front's Zubeidi said.
U.S. and other foreign officials engaged in Iraq's political process have pressed hard to forge compromises among the Shi'ite majority, their Kurdish allies and the once dominant Sunnis and have acknowledged frustrations with the Alliance in government.
Accusations that the majority group has failed to listen to minorities have been aggravated by accounts of human rights abuses by pro-government militias; the Alliance's ties to fellow Shi'ite Islamists ruling Iran have also caused friction with Washington as well as angered Sunni Arabs in Iraq and abroad.
