EU's Ashton to be urged to lodge formal Iraq vote protest

(BRUSSELS) - European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton will next week be urged to lodge a formal protest over "widespread fraud" during the Iraqi election count.

"I'll be providing my edited dossier to the parliament and to Baroness Ashton's office on Wednesday," said Struan Stevenson, the conservative Scottish chairman of the EU parliament's delegation for relations with Iraq.

Stevenson says he has compiled 35 pages of allegations including pictures from polling-station workers and Iraqi police officers detailing deliberate actions to prevent ex-premier Iyad Allawi from unseating Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

A European Commission observer will also return from Iraq, at which point Ashton and the European parliament will be asked to decide "whether to formally call the result that gets announced into question.

"Given we are spending billions of euros in Iraq, if we feel the government that is returned is not legitimate, it could have very serious consequences indeed," Stevenson underlined.

The lawmaker on Thursday alleged widespread fraud at the behest of Iran, which unleashed a flood of complaints, and said on Friday he had "plausible" allegations even including pens with "disappearing ink" being given to voters in certain, marginal polling areas.

He repeated his claim that "Tehran's fingerprints are all over" the vote's conduct.

Allawi's secular Iraqiya bloc has alleged that fraud took place during Sunday's polls in favour of Maliki's State of Law Alliance, a charge dismissed by the latter bloc as exaggerated.

The national election commission said the claims were either politically motivated or fuelled by a misunderstanding of the counting procedures, but said it would investigate any complaints it received.