BAGHDAD, December 20, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Iraq's leading Sunni coalition and the list of former premier Iyad Allawi on Tuesday, December 20, challenged partial election results that gave lead to the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), threatening to demand a new ballot.

"We reject the results announced by the [Electoral] commission," Adnan Al-Dulaimi, one of the leaders of the National Concord Front (NCF) coalition, told a news conference, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"If the commission does not take steps to restore justice to other lists, we will demand a new election be held," he said.

"Some parties are playing with fire and we will not tolerate this," Dulaimi threatened, asking the UN, EU, Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to intervene.

Al-Dulaimi called on Saturday, December 17, for a coalition government to protect national unity in Iraq as he thanked resistance fighters for not attacking polling stations during last week's legislative election.

After largely boycotting the January elections, Sunni Arabs turned out en masse to elect the first full-term parliament since the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime by US-led occupation forces in April 2003.

The 275-member legislature's first task will be to appoint a president and two vice presidents who will then have 15 days to name a prime minister.

The premier will have 30 days to form a full-term, four-year cabinet with parliamentary approval.

Tariq al-Hashemi, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the main NCF components, urged the electoral commission to revise the announced results.

"The commission can still rectify the situation, otherwise it will be entirely responsible for this fraud which will have serious repercussions on the security and economic situation," he said.

Hashemi said the announced results include nearly 500,000 votes more than the registered voters in Baghdad.

"We will not accept this. We will go to the streets and call for demonstrations," Sunni Arab politician Hussein al-Falluji, a leader of the NCF, told Reuters.

He maintained that his coalition should have been credited with twice the number of votes announced.

"We might also boycott the new parliament."

Results announced on Tuesday gave the NCF 73 percent of the vote in the majority Sunni province of Anbar, with half the ballots counted.

However, the coalition took only a third of the vote in the other two Sunni provinces of Salaheddin and Nineveh after almost 90 percent of the vote was tabulated.

Iraqi workers remove election posters from a wall in central Baghdad. (Reuters)

Allawi's list denounced the count as a fraud and accused individual election officials of partisanship.

Hamid Majid Mussa, secretary general of the communist party, an INL partner, slammed an "irresponsible" electoral commission.

"They are harming the political process at a time when we are trying to build a state of laws and institutions," said Mussa.

According to partial results, the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance of Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari may hold on to a slim parliamentary majority.

In Baghdad, by far the biggest of Iraq's 18 provinces and accounting for 59 of 230 parliamentary seats allocated by regional ballots, the UIA won 58 percent with 89 percent of the vote counted.

The NCF came second with 18.6 percent and Allawi's Iraqi National List took 13.5 percent.

Results from nine other provinces where the bulk of the vote had been counted showed the UIA dominant again in the southern Shiite heartlands.

In Maysan, for example, it outscored by more than 20 times the second-placed INL.

The Kurdish alliance of Massoud Barzani and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani swept the north and came far ahead of its close rival the Islamic Kurdish Union in Arbil, Dahuk and As-Sulimaniya.

The Electoral Commission announced Tuesday that final results will only be available early next year because more than 1,000 complaints of polling abuses need to be investigated.

Those complaints had to be processed and investigated by the electoral commission, election official Farid Ayar told a Baghdad news conference.