Recount of ballots cast in Baghdad begins amid dispute (Roundup)

May 3, 2010, 15:46 GMT

Baghdad - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's coalition has called for a halt to the vote recount that started on Monday after a court ordered it, based on the same coalition's appeal of the election results.

The State of Law coalition argued that the recount of the March parliamentary election votes in Baghdad 'does not comply with the court's decision.'

Shortly after Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) started the recount process, the coalition announced that it filed a new complaint to the court saying that the commission's approach and ensuing results 'would not reflect the true will of the voters.'

'We want a manual, transparent recount process, but we were surprised that the electoral commission decided to open the ballot box, but does not match the votes with the voter register,' Minister of Oil Hussein al-Shahristani told reporters.

Last month, a court ordered a manual recount of ballots cast in the capital after al-Maliki's coalition appealed the election results, saying it had proof of fraud.

The results of the March 7 parliamentary elections showed former prime minister's Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya List winning 91 seats in the 325-member parliament, followed by al-Maliki's coalition with 89 seats.

Officials will recount some 2.5 million votes cast in 11,000 polling stations in the capital - a process that will take two weeks.

Al-Shahristani said that the process should have started with a comparison of the number of voters to the number of votes, and if they match, should then go on to the manual recount.

The head of the IHEC, Faraj al-Hayderi, said the commission started the recount process based on the Appeals Court decision.

'This is our interpretation of the law,' al-Hayderi said, adding that the coalition can appeal the procedure.

Allawi's narrow lead is threatened, after a Baghdad court order disqualified one winning candidate from his coalition because of former links with the Baath Party.

The court, whose rulings can be appealed, has yet to rule on whether nine other winning candidates should be disqualified retrospectively.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish Alliance list announced it withdrew the complaint it filed to the court about the election results in the northern city of Kirkuk, after feeling responsible in part for the 'unstable situation and the constitutional vacuum in Iraq.'

The Kurdistan Alliance and the Iraqiya List each won six of the province's 12 seats in parliament.

The oil-rich city and the northern city of Mosul are at the centre of a political dispute between Arab and Kurdish Iraqis.

Many of the country's Kurds hope to make Kirkuk the capital of a future independent state, while Arab and Turkmen politicians view the city - and its nearby oilfields - as an integral part of the country.