Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Sunni Muslim political leaders charged Tuesday that Iraq’s preliminary election results were rigged, raising fears that they’ll reject the new government as illegitimate.

If that happens, many fear that Sunnis will depend on the insurgency to achieve their political aims, not the parliament, pushing the nation toward civil war, not consensus, and threatening U.S. plans to withdraw some troops.

Election results released Tuesday, with nearly 90 percent of the votes counted, showed that Shiite Muslims, who make up about 60 percent of the population, won about 110 seats in the 275-member National Assembly through their United Iraqi Alliance slate. Sunnis had 33, and the Kurds had 40. Most of the remaining seats went to smaller parties.

Among some Sunni residents in Baghdad there was a sudden feeling of uncertainty about whether their votes would lead to a stronger government or more division. Many Sunnis, who’d rejected the country’s election in January for an interim parliament, voted for the first time in last Thursday’s election for a permanent National Assembly.

The Iraqi Accord Front, made up of the top three Sunni parties, announced Tuesday that it wanted a new election in Baghdad province, where its members had expected to pick up the most seats. The front didn’t provide specifics about how the election allegedly was rigged.

Some Sunni leaders suggested that if the results hold, insurgents who’d put down their arms to try the political process might resort to violence again.

“The security of Iraq will not be achieved by having such results,” said Adnan al-Dulaimi, a top member of the Sunni slate, adding: “All the Iraqis know that the results are forged, and this result did not represent the truth.”

The Shiites “won’t enjoy authority,” Saleh Mutlaq, a member of another Sunni slate, Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, said at a news conference.

Until these announcements by the Sunni groups, many Iraqis had hoped that the election, the first with broad participation, would create a government that was accepted across religious, tribal and ethnic lines. Political groups had begun to discuss coalitions after early results showed that coalitions would be necessary to reach the two-thirds agreement needed to approve a new president and pass changes to the constitution.

Sunnis picked up seven of their seats from Anbar province, a Sunni stronghold and common hiding area for insurgents. They earned seven seats in Ninevah province and four in Diyala province, both mixed-population areas.

While the Sunnis’ objections were the loudest, many parties charged that ballot-box stuffing and fraud marred the election. Farid Ayar, an elections spokesman, dismissed the charges as politicking, but said the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq would investigate 20 “very serious” complaints.

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“We respect our brothers’ view, yet it always happens in the electoral game,” he said. “As for holding a re-election, the returns have not been fully tallied. The numbers are still preliminary. They can call for that when we have final returns.”

Some analysts said that with less than 20 percent of the seats in the National Assembly, it would be difficult for the Sunnis not to feel railroaded.

“Earlier this year, there was much Sunni Arab anger that an election they boycotted in a failed protest left them marginalized. Now, perhaps even worse, they will likely see an election in which they participated in large numbers produce much the same result,” said Wayne White, a former top State Department intelligence analyst on the Middle East who’s now affiliated with the Middle East Institute.

The party of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite whom U.S. officials had championed openly, got about 20 seats, fewer than his supporters had expected. Allawi’s party also charged that the election process had been fixed.

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(Knight Ridder Newspapers special correspondents Ahmed Mukhtar and Mohammed al Awsy contributed to this report from Baghdad. Warren P. Strobel contributed from Washington.)

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(c) 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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AP-NY-12-20-05 1752EST

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