Iraq PM in tight contest with ex-premier for poll lead

(BAGHDAD) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in a tight contest to keep his job as he vied with ex-premier Iyad Allawi, initial election results from four of the country's 18 provinces showed Thursday.

Four days after the election, Maliki and Allawi, both Shiite, have emerged nationally as the main candidates for the post of prime minister, with their blocs appearing to have fared best in Sunday's polls.

The preliminary figures, which were announced once 30 percent of votes had been counted in the southern provinces of Najaf and Babil, put Maliki's State of Law Alliance first and the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, in second place.

Allawi's secular Iraqiya alliance was in third place.

The State of Law Alliance held a lead of around 7,000 votes in Najaf and of 14,000 in Babil, the figures showed.

An election official later added that Allawi was in the lead in Diyala and Salaheddin, two majority Sunni provinces north of Baghdad, with 17 percent of votes counted.

"Allawi is in the lead in Diyala and Salaheddin," Iyad al-Kinaani, an official in Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission said.

In the autonomous region of Kurdistan, meanwhile, Kinaani said the Kurdistania alliance, made up of the region's two long-dominant parties, was in the lead in Arbil province with 27 percent of votes counted.

Kurdistania is made up of regional president Massud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

In second place was the opposition Goran bloc ("Change" in Kurdish), which surprised observers by snaring nearly a quarter of the vote in Kurdish regional elections last year.

Complete results are expected to be announced on March 18 and the final ones -- after any appeals are dealt with -- will come at the end of the month.

Analysts have predicted protracted coalition building, as no single grouping is expected to win the 163 seats necessary to form a government on its own.

Several blocs called on Thursday for individual polling station tally sheets to be published online, expressing concerns the nationwide vote would not be in line with the total from individual stations.

Were the polling station tally sheets posted online, political blocs could check to see if their sum corresponded with the nationwide results tabulated by the election commission.

"I am not saying there has been fraud but we fear that the results could have been modified," said Maysun Damaluji, spokeswoman for the Iraqiya bloc and a candidate for parliament.

"The count is not being conducted in a proper fashion," Damaluji said, claiming that some party observers had been evicted from counting rooms. No election official was immediately available to comment on the allegations.

The INA added in its own statement that it was concerned over "signs of intentions to change the election results."

"We call on the commission to put the tally sheets of each province on the commission's website so that candidates and political entities will be able to count their votes manually," it said.

Electoral authorities have received around 1,000 complaints, according to Hamdiyah al-Husseini, an election official.

And in Brussels, the point-man for European Parliament relations with Iraq accused top Iraqi electoral commission figures of rigging the election at Iran's behest.

"I understand that very high officials from the Iraqi Electoral Commission have been caught cheating by entering false data on the election computer," said British conservative MEP Struan Stevenson in a statement.

Meanwhile, Maliki's office said in a statement that he "had a surgical operation by a specialised Iraqi medical team" on Wednesday, adding that he had "left the hospital in good health."

Ali al-Mussawi, an advisor to the prime minister, declined to give details on the surgery when contacted by AFP.

General Ray Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said on Tuesday he had been in close touch with Iraqi authorities about ensuring security after the country's second parliamentary election since the 2003 US-led invasion.