BAGHDAD, 21 December 2005 — Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority cried foul yesterday over results of last week’s election, angry at signs Shiites will remain dominant and possibly retain an absolute majority in Parliament.

Clashes in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, the heaviest since the election, and warnings of a Sunni boycott of the new assembly soured the optimistic atmosphere of Thursday’s vote, when an informal cease-fire by guerrillas assisted a big turnout.

The election commission, where a top official was taken to hospital after a heated dispute with colleagues, dismissed many of the complaints as pressure from losers. Officials admitted problems but said they would not have greatly affected the results.

“We demand that this election be annulled,” hard-line Sunni leader Saleh Al-Mutlak told a news conference, calling on the United Nations, European Union and United States to step in.

He warned of “civil war” if Shiite parties gained a monopoly on power and said he had proof of major ballot rigging. UN and US officials have said the voting appeared largely fair despite irregularities affecting all parties.

Gunfire and explosions, apparently involving rebels and US forces, broke out in Ramadi after dark, local residents said.

“The insurgents have had an informal truce for five days to give us a chance to vote,” Hussein Al-Falluji of the biggest Sunni bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front, said. “But I think what is going on now will impact on security ... very quickly.”

A Jordanian Embassy driver was kidnapped by gunmen at his Baghdad home, the latest of many foreigners to be abducted.

There was no immediate report of demands but other Arab diplomatic staff have been snatched and killed by Iraq’s Al-Qaeda militants seeking to isolate the Shiite-led government.

Provisional results released yesterday gave the ruling Shiite alliance 58 percent of the vote in Baghdad, by far the biggest of Iraq’s 18 provinces. Officials in various parties reckon the alliance should take 120 to 140 out of 275 seats.

The alliance and its Kurdish allies won overwhelming victories in their respective southern and northern heartlands, with 95 percent of votes counted across the country. Sunni groups aimed to pick up seats in northern and western regions.

But stunned by their defeats in Baghdad, where Sunnis who mostly boycotted an election in January and more secular-minded voters appear more numerous than in other areas, the Accordance Front called for a rerun of the vote there.

A secular grouping led by Shiite former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi denounced the count as a fraud and accused individual election officials of partisanship. Like many Sunnis, Allawi accuses pro-government Shiite militias of running death squads against Sunnis, who were dominant under Saddam Hussein.

Falluji, whose Accordance Front came a distant second in Baghdad with 19 percent, told Reuters: “We will not accept this. We will go to the streets and call for demonstrations. We might also boycott the new Parliament.”

The Sunni boycott of January’s vote for an interim assembly deprived that body of much of its legitimacy. It forced US diplomats to step in to broker deals to appease Sunnis in the hope of staunching rebel attacks on US troops.

Washington hailed the latest vote as an entry by Sunnis into the political process in a new, full-term legislature, but it acknowledges sectarian and ethnic hatreds still run deep.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, a key figure in negotiations, hinted he may seek concessions from the Shiites. “There has to be cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian cooperation. At this point, sectarian identity has played a dominant role,” he said.

Adding to US pressure on the Shiites, President George W. Bush called interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and spoke of the need for “broad participation,” the White House said.