BAGHDAD, March 17, (AFP): Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his main rival Iyad Allawi were locked in a tight election battle Wednesday, with updated results showing their blocs neck-and-neck in the race for parliament. Maliki’s State of Law Alliance and Allawi’s Iraqiya list were each on track to garner 87 seats in the Council of Representatives, with fewer than 9,000 votes separating the two nationwide, according to an AFP calculation based on results released after 79 percent of ballots had been counted.
But votes cast outside Iraq and during special voting for the security forces, the sick and prisoners have not yet been tabulated by Iraq’s election commission and could affect the outcome.
The election, the second since Saddam Hussein was ousted in the US-led invasion of 2003, comes less than six months before the United States is set to withdraw all of its combat troops from Iraq.
An ally of Maliki charged on Wednesday that the count had been plagued by widespread fraud and demanded a nationwide recount.

“There has been clear manipulation inside the election commission in the interests of a certain or a specific list,” said Ali al-Adeeb, a candidate for State of Law in the predominantly Shiite central province of Karbala.
“State of Law demands the counting process be repeated to be sure that there has been no manipulation.”
Adeeb described Iraqiya’s progress as “like a miracle”.
His remarks were a sharp departure from Maliki’s own just days earlier, when he dismissed allegations of fraud as “very small.”
Iyad al-Kinaani, an election commission official, downplayed any allegations of fraud, telling AFP “there is no need to restart the counting process.”
The work of the commission is “transparent and is done with great care because we know the importance of this step.”
Overall, Allawi held a slim lead in the count, with 2,102,981 votes against 2,093,997 for State of Law.
However, State of Law leads in Baghdad, Iraq’s largest province accounting for more than twice as many seats as any other. It is also ahead in southern oil province of Basra, the third biggest.
It is also ahead in five other mostly Shiite central and southern provinces, but failed to finish in the top three in all but one of Iraq’s Sunni-majority provinces.
Allawi’s Iraqiya coalition, on the other hand, was leading in four provinces, including the second biggest province Nineveh. It was also in a virtual tie for the lead in a fifth, Kirkuk, where it was ahead of a Kurdish bloc by only six votes.

It was placed in the top three in six predominantly Shiite provinces where Maliki was either first or second.
“The results announced yesterday (Tuesday) show that we have been in the lead since the beginning of the elections,” said Haidar al-Mullah, an Iraqiya candidate.
“Iraqiya is in the lead because it represents Iraqi national identity.”
The Iraqi National Alliance, a coalition led by Shiite religious groups is set to come in third with 67 seats, while Kurdistania, comprised of the autonomous Kurdish region’s two long-dominant parties, is likely to have 38.
No other group is set to win more than 10 seats. Fifteen of the 325 seats in parliament are either compensatory or reserved for minorities.
Iraq’s system of proportional representation makes it unlikely that any single group will clinch the 163 seats that would enable it to form government on its own, and protracted coalition building is likely.
Both State of Law and Iraqiya have said they have begun talks with rival blocs to form a government, with analysts warning that political groupings could still manoeuvre to form a coalition without either list.

Charged
Iraq’s anti-corruption watchdog has charged 356 people with stealing a total $40 million in public funds, it said on Wednesday.
“The Integrity Commission has sent 356 defendants to the criminal courts, charged with corruption for stealing 46 billion Iraqi dinars,” it said, without providing details on who the people were, or what they allegedly did.
It added that in January and February, it issued warrants for the arrest of 433 persons in connection with corruption inquiries, including 22 senior civil servants.
The commission did not, however, name the senior officials, or say if any of them had been arrested.
Corruption is a major problem in Iraq. The country ranked 176th out of 180 countries in international anti-corruption NGO Transparency International’s 2009 corruption perceptions index.

A Christian shopkeeper was gunned down on Wednesday in the main northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where eight members of the minority were killed in 10 days last month, a police officer said.
“Unknown armed men driving an unmarked car killed Sabah Gurgis while he was on his way to work this morning,” police Major Khalid Mahmud said.
“One of the men opened fire on him before escaping.”
Gurgis, 54, owned a shop selling spectacles close to his home in the centre of Mosul, Mahmud said.
Between Feb 14 and 23, eight Christians were killed in and around Mosul, sparking protests in Baghdad and the northern city involving hundreds of Christians, who accused the government and security forces of inaction.
Iraq has said it will set up an inquiry and boost security in Mosul.
In November, New York-based Human Rights Watch warned that minorities in the oil-rich north including Christians were the collateral victims of a conflict between Arabs and Kurds over who controls Iraq’s disputed northern provinces.
While sectarian violence has dropped dramatically across Iraq since its peak between 2005 and 2007, attacks remain common, especially in Baghdad and Mosul.

Headquarters
The US military may set up an additional headquarters in northern Iraq even after Washington scales back its forces by a September deadline, a top US general said on Tuesday.
The possible move reflects US concerns that Arab-Kurd tensions, provoked by disputes over land and oil rights, are the biggest threat to Iraq’s long-term stability.
General David Petraeus, head of Central Command, told lawmakers that putting a headquarters in the country’s volatile north was “something that we are looking at.”
“There’s a possibility that we may want to keep an additional brigade headquarters, as an example, but then slim out some of its organic forces and some of the other organic forces elsewhere,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“And if indeed we think that there’s a particularly fragile situation, say, in a certain area in the north, then we might do that,” the general said.
He said military headquarters were an important platform for US engagement with Iraqis.
But Petraeus said the military was still on course to reduce the US force to 50,000 by the end of August, under a target set by President Barack Obama.
“We are on track to reduce that number to 50,000 by the end of August, at which time we will also complete a change in mission that marks the transition of our forces from a combat role to advising and assisting Iraqi Security Forces,” Petraeus said.
He said a large turnout for the March 7 elections in Iraq — the second since Saddam Hussein was ousted in the US-led invasion of 2003 — marked an important sign of progress since sectarian violence peaked in 2006-2007.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s bloc looked likely on Tuesday to form parliament’s single largest grouping, after results showed the incumbent had maintained his hold on Baghdad.
The Pentagon insisted earlier this month that the gradual withdrawal of American troops from Iraq was on schedule, despite a report that the US commander there wanted to slow the pace of the drawdown.
A defense blog on the Foreign Policy website had reported that General Ray Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq, had told the White House he needed additional troops beyond the 50,000 limit to handle possible tensions in northern Iraq.
Meanwhile, Denmark’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a request by 26 Danish citizens to prosecute former prime minister and current NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen for sending troops to Iraq.

The nine judges threw out the petition saying troops were deployed as a result of a “political foreign affairs decision” in circumstances in which the constitution allowed the government to “act in the name of the kingdom,” according to a written explanation given by the court.
The group of 26 plaintiffs calling themselves the Committee of the Constitution 2003 wanted Rasmussen to be put on trial for what it describes as “the illegal decision of the government and parliament of March 21, 2003 to lead a war of aggression against Iraq.”
It said the war had violated article 19 of the constitution which only allowed a defensive war against a foreign state or a commitment in a conflict “legitimised” by the United Nations.
Denmark deployed forces in Iraq from 2003 to 2007 when it withdrew its battalion of 430 troops in the south of the country.