Sunni Arab groups in Iraq refused on Thursday to join talks about a new government until the United Nations reviews disputed results in the recent parliamentary elections.
The main Shia grouping, the United Iraqi Alliance, has already begun negotiations with Kurdish leaders aimed at forming a coalition government, but Sunni Arab groups say they will not get involved in any talks on government before the results are fully cleared.
If they do attend, it will be ”only to look for solutions for the political crisis. They will not talk about the government,” Dhafer al-Ani, spokesperson for the Iraqi Accordance Front — the main Sunni electoral bloc — told Reuters.
Although final results are still to be declared, Sunni Arab and secular parties have been disappointed by their electoral performance, demanding a re-run of the polls held on December 15 and threatening to boycott the new Parliament. Tens of thousands of their supporters have taken to the streets in protest.
Partial results show that the Shia alliance has done better than expected, particularly in Baghdad, where it took 59% of the vote compared with just 19% for its nearest Sunni rivals and 14% for former prime minister Ayad Allawi’s broad secular coalition.
”There will be no negotiations about forming the new government,” Hussein al-Falluji, a Sunni candidate on the Accordance list, said. ”We will not have any dialogue about it, not with the Kurds and not with the Shia. Results should be reviewed and announced first.”
The Shia and Kurds are expected to win enough seats to form a coalition by themselves but the United States and Britain are concerned about disaffection among the Sunni Arabs and want to see them included in any new government.
Sunni Arabs formed the backbone of Saddam Hussein’s regime but have been marginalised since the overthrow of the Ba’athists, while the Shia majority — who account for around 65% of the population but were once themselves marginalised — are now in the ascendant.
A United Nations official, Craig Jenness, angered Sunni Arabs and secularists on Wednesday when he told a news conference that his international election assistance team had found the elections to be fair. He said the number of complaints was fewer than one for every 7 000 voters.
”In our view, all communities of Iraq have won in these elections, all will have a strong voice in Parliament. We hope the elections will be the start of a new process of strength and unity in Iraq,” Jenness said.
Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni candidate who has joined forces with Allawi’s secular group to protest against what they regard as rampant electoral fraud, again demanded an independent review of about 1 500 complaints, including 50 or so deemed serious enough to affect the results in some areas.
”The UN stand provokes our astonishment because they have not responded to our complaints which we have submitted,” Mutlaq told the Associated Press. ”This statement provokes anger and frustration.”
Iraq’s Independent Electoral Commission has acknowledged some instances of fraud and has hinted that it may annul the results from some polling stations.
In what appeared to be a conciliatory move yesterday, Safwat Rashid, an Electoral Commission official, renewed an invitation to international organisations and party representatives to review the elections. ”We are highly confident that we did our job properly and we have nothing to hide,” he said.
In continuing violence on Thursday, gunmen in the Sunni-dominated town of Latifiya, south of Baghdad, seized 12 Shia men from their homes, herded them into a minivan and shot them dead, police and Iraqi army officials said.
In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed a US soldier on patrol. One Iraqi policemen died and four others were injured in a suicide bombing near the interior ministry, police said. – Guardian Unlimited Â