Official Election Results Are Announced; Negotiations Begin on Ruling Coalition

 By Nelson Hernandez and Omar Fekeiki - Washington Post Staff Writers - Saturday, January 21, 2006; 2:08 AM

BAGHDAD, Jan. 20 -- Official election results released Friday showed that an alliance of Shiite Muslim religious parties will remain the largest bloc in Iraq's parliament but will have to reach out to other factions to form a coalition government in the weeks ahead.

The uncertified results from parliamentary elections held Dec. 15 presented few surprises. The Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, won 128 of the legislature's 275 seats, more than twice as many as any other group but well short of the two-thirds needed to form a government single-handedly.

The key questions, Iraqi politicians say, are where the Shiites will turn for that support, and whether they will aim for a narrow majority by courting groups that largely share their political and religious goals or compromise with disparate factions to form a broader government of national unity.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have said they anticipate weeks of freewheeling negotiation as Iraq's four major political groupings -- of Shiite, Sunni Arab, Kurdish and secular parties -- stake out their positions. The presence in parliament of nine smaller parties, representing a variety of political, ethnic and sectarian groups, as well as the looming presence of the United States, which still has 120,000 troops in the country, only add to the complexity of the situation.

The Shiites could achieve a parliamentary majority by allying with the secular Kurdistan Coalition List, which won 53 seats. Such a coalition would leave the Shiites only one seat short of the 182 they would need for a two-thirds majority.

Many Sunni Arabs fear the formation of a Shiite- and Kurd-dominated government because both groups favor decentralizing power in Iraq through formation of largely autonomous regions of Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis -- an outcome that would leave the Sunnis largely excluded from the country's oil revenue.

Some Sunnis also fear vengeance from Shiites and Kurds, who faced severe repression under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein while Sunnis were rewarded. Finally, many Sunnis and secular Iraqis, and even some Shiites, worry that their country will be transformed into a puppet of Iran, a neighboring Shiite theocracy.

"This could lead to the breakup of Iraq," said Saleh Mutlak, head of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, a Sunni Arab party that won 11 seats. Mutlak warned that the country's Sunni-dominated insurgency would become "very fierce" if the Shiites and Kurds attempted to form their own government without Sunni input.

"They will not do it unless they are mad," Mutlak said of the Shiites in an interview Friday. "But in Iraq, you can expect everything."

For their part, leaders in the Shiite alliance have given out mixed messages recently about their intentions. Some, like Jawad Maliki, have said they favor a government of national unity but insist that Sunnis will have to compromise to be included.

"We want a national-unity government according to the election results," Maliki said in an interview. "Other sides want more than their share. I think they'll accept the results of the elections, and we'll also welcome them into the government."

But the country's leading Shiite politician, Abdul Aziz Hakim, said last week that he would not allow changes to the essence of the Iraqi constitution, which guarantees the right to form federal regions. Before the constitution was put to a national referendum in October, Sunnis were promised that the next parliament would have an opportunity to make broad changes to the charter, so Hakim's statement caused alarm among some Sunni politicians.

While the negotiations began Friday night with a flurry of meetings among politicians, the parties also assessed whether they would accept the election results. Sunni, Kurdish and even Shiite politicians all said Friday that they might formally protest the vote count, which has been marred by accusations of fraud, leading to the rejection this week of somewhat less than 1 percent of the 11 million votes cast.

"The election results were not satisfactory at all," said Hussein Falluji, a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the leading coalition of Sunni Arab parties, which won 44 seats. "We expected more seats. When we took part in the political and electoral process, we thought that the process will be flexible and credible and won't be subjected to fraud. But that is what happened."

"We've lost eight seats in the process of counting the votes," said Ridha Jawad Taqi, a political officer for the Shiite alliance. "We will present a complaint tomorrow to demand another way of counting the votes. We want our seats back."

Meanwhile, a surge of violence anticipated by U.S. military officials did not materialize in Baghdad, where military and police units were out in force Friday night. Twelve people were reported dead across the country in various incidents, according to the Reuters news agency.

The U.S. military reported insurgent attacks on military bases in the western city of Ramadi almost immediately after the results of the election were announced. In a statement, military authorities said the insurgents, attacking with mortars and small arms, were driven off within an hour by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers assisted by aircraft. The military did not report casualties in the engagement.

In the morning, an artillery barrage shook southern Baghdad's Dora district. Iraqi police said U.S. artillery batteries were responding to at least three mortar rounds fired from southern neighborhoods toward Baghdad International Airport.