DUBAI, March 15, (Agenciess): Iraq’s Arab neighbours fear a split Iraqi election could further marginalise minority Sunnis and hope any coalition government formed by the Shi’ite frontrunner will resist Iran’s sway. Many Sunni Arabs had wanted a stronger showing by secularists, who they now hope will bring cross-sectarian balance to any coalition government that could be formed by Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. “These election results show that there is a Shi’ite wave in the region which threatens Arab security in the region. Iran has a hidden role in the Arab region and it supports Shi’ite elements in the area, particularly in Iraq,” said Magid Mazloum from the Centre for Gulf Studies in Cairo.

“Sunnis in Iraq are a scattered minority stuck between Shi’ites on the one hand and Kurds on the other. This is bound to create instability in the country.” In Kuwait, with often tense ties to Iraq, said it did not matter whether the government was led by Sunnis or Shi’ites. “Any result of a democratic process in Iraq is a gain for us and the region,” said Ali al-Baghli, Kuwaiti political analyst and former oil minister.
“Kuwait was threatened by Iraq several times when it was under a Sunni ruler (Saddam Hussein). It was Sunni Iraq that threatened Kuwait and it was Sunni Iraq that invaded Kuwait,” he added. But the overall picture, reflecting a nation fragmented by decades of sectarian and ethnic conflict, was still incomplete a week after the vote. Results released so far represent just over a quarter of 12 million votes cast, and may change.

Sunni-led Arab countries, particularly in the Gulf where there are significant and marginalised Shi’ite minorities, worry about the repercussions of Iranian influence in Iraq. They are concerned that the Shi’ite majority is trying to deprive Iraq’s once dominant Sunnis of their fair share of power. They fear meddling by Shi’ite non-Arab Iran in Iraq, an Arab country with a Shi’ite Muslim majority, could incite their own Shi’ite populations and that sectarian instability in Iraq could spill over. “The big worry for us is that such a divided and sectarian Iraq is easily penetrated by regional powers and here of course Iran comes as the biggest and meddling regional power,” said Emirati analyst Abdul-Khaleq Abdullah. “That really does not settle very nicely with the GCC, the smaller Gulf countries,” he added, referring to a bloc of six Gulf Arab states, including top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.

The outcome of Iraq’s first parliamentary poll since 2005 will shape its future as its stability is tested by an upcoming US troop withdrawal and political struggles undermining Iraq’s efforts to re-establish itself on the world stage.
“From my point of view I hope they mix the authorities together. It’s the best choice they have ... That’s why a coalition would be a good thing,” said Yasser Ahmed Ali, 28, an Emirati production engineer.
Final results are not expected for weeks.
“The new Iraq will be an imbalanced Iraq. Results show Shi’ites in the lead,” said Abdullah al-Ashaal, former assistant to Egypt’s minister of foreign affairs.
“Such results are in line of what Iran wants and the Shi’ite coalitions seem to be with Iran.”
Few Arabs thought that elections in Iraq would put pressure on other Arab governments to give voices to their own citizens. But Saudi commentator Abdullah bin Bijad al-Oteiby said the vote showed fragile but growing democracy there.
“Everyone knows that Iraq is still a stage for regional and international influences, but the Iraqi citizen’s awareness of the vote’s value has increased,” he wrote in a column in Okaz newspaper.
Western diplomats say Riyadh, the leading political player in the Gulf, fears Iraq’s democracy inspiring Saudis to question the system of government in the absolute monarchy.

Tightened
Iraqi Premier Nuri al-Maliki tightened his grip on key Baghdad province, updated election results showed on Monday, making it increasingly likely his bloc will form parliament’s single biggest grouping. Complete election results are expected on March 18.
His success in the capital, which accounts for more than twice as many seats as any other province, builds on his lead in seven provinces overall, and is a major boost for his bid to retain the top job.
Maliki’s main rival, secular ex-prime minister Iyad Allawi, leads in five provinces, although all the results figures remain incomplete.
Meanwhile, a suicide bombing west of Baghdad on Monday, the first such attack since the March 7 polls, killed eight people and highlighted the security concerns that still plague the country.
The results from the election — the second since Saddam Hussein was ousted in the US-led invasion of 2003 — come less than six months before the United States is set to withdraw all of its combat troops from the country.

Preliminary results, based on 60 percent of ballots counted, showed Maliki’s State of Law Alliance held a 65,000-vote lead over Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc with the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition of Shiite religious groups, a distant third.
Earlier results released on Saturday for Baghdad put Maliki’s lead at 50,000 votes over the two blocs, which were neck-and-neck at the time.
Figures released on Monday showed Allawi, a Shiite Arab like Maliki, narrowly ahead in the northern oil province of Kirkuk, defying predictions of a win for the Kurdish bloc which wants to incorporate Kirkuk into autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan in the north.
Iraqiya is also leading in Nineveh, Iraq’s second-largest province around the main northern city of Mosul, as well as western Anbar province and Diyala and Salaheddin in central Iraq. All are predominantly Sunni.
The INA is ahead in the Shiite southern provinces of Maysan, Diwaniyah and Dhi Qar.
Elsewhere, figures showed Kurdistania, an alliance of the two main Kurdish former rebel factions, ahead in all three of Kurdistan’s provinces.

Handed over
Meanwhile, the US military handed over a $107 million prison and nearly 3,000 inmates to the Iraqi government on Monday as it prepares to leave Iraq seven years after ousting Saddam Hussein.
The formal transfer of the detention centre at Camp Taji, a sprawling US base north of Baghdad, is part of a plan to unwind a US detention programme in Iraq that cost $500 million a year at its peak.
US forces had taken into custody about 90,000 people since the 2003 invasion. By August, there will only be about 100 in US custody, said Major General David Quantock, head of detention operations.
“At one point our guard force was over 10,000 and now we’re going to go to a guard force of around 100 by the first of September, all part of the responsible drawdown plan to get US forces down to 50,000,” he said.
The US detention centres in Iraq were being closed or transferred to the Iraqi government under a bilateral security pact signed by Iraq and the United States in 2008. The largest, Camp Bucca in the southern desert near Kuwait, was shut down last September.
The last, Camp Cropper located near Baghdad airport, will be turned over to Iraq on July 15, Quantock said.

Killed
A double-blast suicide bomber targeting a military checkpoint and labourers killed eight people on Monday in the former Sunni rebel bastion of Fallujah, Iraqi police and medics said.
Twenty-eight other civilians were wounded in the blasts, which occurred within minutes of each other at around 9:00 am (0600 GMT) in the centre of Fallujah, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, officials said.
Captain Bashar Mohammed, a police station chief in Fallujah, said the bomber parked his explosives-packed vehicle near a military checkpoint in the centre of the city.
The assailant then walked into a group of labourers and detonated his explosives vest. The car bomb exploded shortly afterwards, again without causing any military casualties.
“He blew himself up among a group of day labourers,” Mohammed said.
The casualty toll of eight labourers killed and 28 civilians wounded was confirmed by Ahmed Abdul Halim, a doctor at Fallujah General Hospital, without giving a breakdown for the two attacks.
A Shiite extremist group on Monday discounted claims from its former hostage that he was mistreated, presenting a video taken during his two-and-a-half year captivity showing the Briton exercising and playing with a child.

Peter Moore and his four bodyguards were taken hostage outside the Finance Ministry in Baghdad in May 2007 by men wearing uniforms. After more than two years in captivity, Moore was freed last December and returned home to Britain.
Moore told British media he was tortured, doused with water, hung by his arms from a door and at one point subjected to a mock execution.
The 40-second video depicts Peter Moore counting prayer beads while lying on a mattress inside a simple room with a dirt floor. He is also shown watching TV, playing with a small child, eating an orange, writing, and exercising on a treadmill.
Moore’s release was a rare positive outcome for a foreign hostage held in Iraq. Three of Moore’s bodyguards had died and the fourth is also believed to be dead.