10,000 Protest, Seeking Vote Review

More than 10,000 Sunni and secular Shiite Muslims protested in the center of Iraq’s capital Tuesday, demanding an international review of what they called a tainted parliamentary election and warning that they may boycott the new legislature.

The demonstration occurred as the Shiite religious bloc leading in the vote tally talked with Kurdish leaders about filling the top 12 government posts.

The protesters were seeking a review of more than 1,500 voting complaints and new elections in some provinces, including Baghdad.

Two Sunni Arab groups and the secular Iraqi National List headed by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a Shiite, have threatened a wave of protests and civil disobedience if fraud allegations are not properly investigated.

But the United Nations has rejected an outside review. Abdelaziz Hakim, head of the Shiite religious coalition that leads the current government, said his bloc and his Kurdish partners also were against it.

The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq considers 35 of the complaints serious enough to change some local results. It said that Tuesday it began auditing ballot boxes taken from about 7,000 polling stations in Baghdad province.

The talks between the majority Shiites and the Kurds were seen as part of an effort to force the main Sunni Arab organizations to come to the bargaining table. All groups have begun jockeying in the wake of the Dec. 15 balloting, and the protests are widely considered an attempt by Sunni Arabs to maximize their negotiating position.

Hakim traveled to the northern Kurdish city of Irbil for the meeting with Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish region.

A Kurdish coalition that includes Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party and President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is the junior partner in the regime led by Hakim’s United Iraqi Alliance.

Preliminary voting results have given the United Iraqi Alliance a big lead, but it probably can’t govern without forming a coalition with other groups. Final results are expected in early January.

Amid the political maneuvering, the Bush administration said Tuesday that Iraqi prisons where hundreds of detainees apparently were abused were only nominally under the control of the central government in Baghdad.

Although the government, with U.S. help, is trying to take charge of the prisons, the Interior Ministry, which runs them, may have its own way of doing things, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli suggested.

“The problem has clearly not been solved, and the problem is widespread,” he said.

“We and the Iraqi government continue to have concern about the way prisoners are treated in Iraqi facilities and in facilities nominally under the control of the Iraqi government.”