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Bid for Iraq vote recount intensifies

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's camp warns of southern Shiites' threat to sever ties with Baghdad.

March 23, 2010|By Ned Parker and Raheem Salman

Senior politicians from Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's ruling coalition warned Tuesday that Shiite Muslim-dominated southern Iraq could severely loosen its ties with Baghdad if the nation's electoral commission failed to meet its demand for a manual recount of ballots in parliamentary elections.

The politicians, who also echoed Maliki's warning Sunday that sectarian violence could return without a recount, accused the U.S. Embassy of working against them. In turn, Western diplomats and advisors to the Iraqi government described Maliki's circle as terrified of losing power and said Iraq was entering a dangerous period.

Preliminary results of the March 7 balloting are due Friday, but the Independent High Electoral Commission has already made it clear it does not intend to conduct a ballot-by-ballot recount. The U.S. Embassy and the United Nations have said that the elections appeared to have been carried out in a credible fashion, with no evidence of widespread fraud.

An analysis of the latest figures by the U.S. military has projected that Maliki's slate will lose the popular vote but win 90 parliamentary seats, compared with 87 seats for the Iraqiya list of his rival Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite and previous prime minister. Such a narrow outcome would make it difficult for Maliki to cobble together a ruling coalition in parliament, observers say, explaining the unease among Maliki supporters.

Sami Askari, a member of Maliki's inner circle and his State of Law election slate, described the electoral commission as a U.N. puppet. He also accused the CIA and elements of the State Department of working to bring Allawi, who has ties to the U.S. intelligence community, back to power.

"The Americans told me six months ago that the CIA and State Department are working on bringing back Allawi," Askari said. "Within State of Law, many believe this."

Askari referred repeatedly to a plot to bring down Maliki's coalition and install Allawi's slate, which includes figures associated with the late dictator Saddam Hussein's Sunni Arab-dominated regime. Askari said if there was no recount, many Shiites would refuse to support a central government that they feared heralded the resurrection of Hussein's Baath Party, which tormented the Shiite majority for 35 years before being toppled in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

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