Iraqi Shias win narrow victory

Iraq's Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance won the biggest number of seats in Iraq's new parliament but too few to rule without coalition partners, the election commission announced today. Sunni Arabs gained seats over the previous balloting.

Commission official Safwat Rasheed said the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance captured 128 of the 275 seats in the 15 December election, down from the 146 it won in January 2005 balloting. It needed 138 to rule without partners.

A Sunni ticket, the Iraqi Accordance Front, won 44 seats. Another Sunni coalition headed by Saleh al-Mutlaq finished with 11 seats, Rasheed said. A few other Sunnis won seats on other tickets.

That will give the Sunni Arabs a bigger voice in the legislature than they had in the outgoing assembly, which included only 17 from the community forming the backbone of the insurgency. Many Sunnis had boycotted the January vote.

Kurds saw their seat total reduced. An alliance of the two major Kurdish parties won 53 seats, down from the 75 they took in the January 2005 vote.

A rival Kurdish ticket, the Kurdish Islamic Group, won five seats, a gain of three from the outgoing parliament.

A ticket headed by secular Shiite former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi won 25 seats, down from 40 in the outgoing assembly. The United States installed Allawi as interim prime minister in 2004 and applauded both his tough stand against insurgents and his secular approach to politics.

This time, however, American diplomats in Baghdad appeared resigned to the fact that Iraqis would generally vote along confessional lines and that secular candidates would not fare well.

US officials here had said privately they hoped only that religious Shiites would win fewer seats to curb their power somewhat, and that more-moderate Sunnis candidates like Adnan al-Dulaimi would fare better than hard-liners - which was the case.

Sunnis fared better - and Kurds poorer - because of a change in the election law between the two national elections last year. In the January 2005 balloting, seats were allocated based on the percentage of votes that tickets won nationwide.

In the December vote, candidates competed for seats by district. This meant that Sunnis were all but guaranteed seats from predominately Sunni areas.

Politicians have four days to contest the results, which were largely in line with preliminary returns following the balloting. Officials then will have 10 days to study any complaints before they certify the results and parliament convenes to appoint a new government.

US officials hope that a greater Sunni voice in the new parliament and government will help defuse the insurgency so American and other international troops can begin withdrawing.

The results were announced a day after an international review group said the December 15 election was flawed but generally fair considering the country's security crisis. Sunni politicians had demanded the review after raising allegations of fraud. Al-Mutlaq had called for a new election.

The decision to have the election reviewed by outside experts was an attempt to mollify Sunni complaints and encourage them to join the political process.

Sunni Arabs dominated political life in Iraq for generations but are believed to comprise about 20% of the country's estimated 27 million people. Shiites form about 60% and Kurds 15-20%.

Many Sunnis contest those figures and assumed they would win more seats since the voting in Iraq's three ballots after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein has been along sectarian lines.