Iraqi party, electoral commission trade accusations of fraud in expat vote in Syria (correction)

Mar 14, 2010, 14:47 GMT

Damascus - The Damascus representative of one of Iraq's leading contenders in the country's recent parliamentary elections reacted angrily on Saturday to the electoral commission's allegations of fraud in voting by expatriate Iraqis in Syria.

The mutual recriminations in Syria followed similar, contradictory allegations of vote-rigging within Iraq during and after the March 7 parliamentary elections.

According to the Syrian government, some 800,000 Iraqis live in Syria. Only some 50,000 expatriate Iraqis in Syria were eligible to participate in the polls, according to electoral commission figures.

Haidar Abdel-Allawi, the official in charge of Iraqi voting in Syria, told the German Press Agency dpa that 3,000 ballots cast in the country had been discarded because of fraud.

The cases had been 'dealt with according to the laws and regulations in force for the elections,' he said.

But Ahmed al-Dulaimi, the Damascus spokesman for former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi List, called allegations of fraud 'lies and slander.'

He accused the electoral commission of improperly 'confiscating hundreds of legitimate ballots for Allawi's list from multiple polling stations on the pretext of multiple voting.'

Al-Dulaimi further accused the electoral commission of 'silencing (Iraqi) voices because they did not have the required documentation to participate in the elections.'

Shortly before last week's polls, Ayad Allawi had travelled to Syria to seek expatriate Syrians' support and to discuss the elections with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Incumbent Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom early results show enjoying a narrow lead over Allawi's list, has in the past accused Syria of not doing enough to stop Iraqi ex-Baathists in Syria from plotting and financing a series of deadly blasts in central Baghdad that left hundreds dead.