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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Partial election results
from six of Iraq's 18 provinces showed the
cleric-endorsed Shiite ticket running strongly for
seats Thursday in the National Assembly.
The results came from 25 percent of the vote in
Baghdad and from partial counts in five
predominantly Shiite provinces, where the United
Iraqi Alliance had been expected to do well. The
alliance had the backing of Iraq's most influential
Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The partial results were too small, however, to show
any national trend. They covered 1.6 million votes
counted so far in Baghdad, Dhi Qar, Muthanna,
Qadisiyah, Najaf and Karbala provinces. Of the six,
sparsely populated Muthanna province had the most
ballots tallied so far: 70 percent.
Meanwhile, incomplete results from eight of the 14
countries where Iraqis voted overseas showed Kurds
doing well in Europe, where a large Kurdish
community lives, while the Shiite ticket was the top
in five countries.
The election commission has said it could take up to
10 days from Sunday's election to count the votes
cast in Iraq, and Thursday's announcement of the
count from the six proivnces was the first of any
partial returns.
The alliance had 1.1 million votes, running first in
all six provinces, while the list of interim Prime
Minister Ayad Allawi had 360,500 votes, running
second.
In Baghdad, for example, the alliance was leading
3-1 over Allawi's list. But the commission did not
say what districts in Baghdad the votes had come
from. The alliance would presumably get fewer votes
in areas with more Sunni or Kurdish populations. The
other five provinces are in the Shiite heartland of
southern Iraq.
The commission said ballots have been counted from
10 percent of the country's polling stations so far.
Seats in the 275-member National Assembly will be
allocated by the percentage of the nationwide vote
that each faction gets. Some 14 million Iraqis were
eligible to vote, but it is not yet known how many
cast ballots. It was not known, therefore, what
percentage of the total 1.6 million would be.
Iraq's Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of
Iraq's estimated 26 million people, turned out in
large numbers in Sunday's balloting, hoping to
reverse decades of oppression under Iraq's Sunni
Arab rulers.
But many in the Sunni Arab minority are thought to
have stayed away, either for fear of retaliation or
because they considered the vote illegitimate.
Meanwhile, the incomplete results of the more
than 265,000 people who voted outside Iraq showed
the Kurds were strong in Britain and France, winning
61.69 percent and 42.93 percent respectively.
In United Arab Emirates, Australia, Iran, Jordan and
the United states, the Shiite list was the top with
a percentage ranging from 29.6 to 66.29. Allawi's
list was leading in Syria with 34.81 percent.
© 2005 The Associated Press
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