BAGHDAD, 25 December 2005 — The governing Shiite coalition called on Iraqis yesterday to accept results showing the religious bloc leading in parliamentary elections and moved ahead with efforts to form a “national unity” government.
But as they reached out to Sunnis and others, senior officials in the United Iraqi Alliance headed by cleric Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim deepened the postelection turmoil by claiming that extremists and Saddam loyalists were the ones questioning the results.
At least one Sunni leader said he was upset by the Shiite comments.
Violence in Iraq left at least nine people dead. Eight people were killed by gunmen around Baghdad and a US soldier died from wounds sustained in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in northern Iraq.
The soldier was assigned to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and was wounded in an attack while on a routine patrol near the town of Hawijah, the military said.
Meanwhile, militants released a video showing Jordanian hostage Mahmoud Suleiman Saidat, giving that country three days to cut ties with the Baghdad government and free Sajida Al-Rishawi, a would-be suicide bomber whose explosives belt failed to go off in Nov. 9 attacks on Amman hotels that killed 60 people.
Saidat, a Jordanian Embassy driver, was kidnapped last Tuesday. Aired on the Al-Arabiya satellite channel, the video had a sign identifying the kidnappers as the Hawk Brigades, a previously unknown group.
“There will be no going back and no new elections,” said senior alliance official Jawad Al-Maliki. “The results must be accepted and the will of the people must be respected.”
The alliance said that preliminary results showing them with a clear lead in the Dec. 15 elections were not the result of fraud or intimidation. They charged that many violations took place in Sunni areas, and claimed that many of its “opponents” conspired with insurgents to alter results.
“We, the United Iraqi Alliance, were surprised by the results. We were expecting more seats,” Al-Maliki said at a news conference attended by five senior alliance members. “The opponents have made it clear through their statements and warnings that they stand alongside the terrorists.”
He was referring to statements by senior Sunni politicians who openly thanked some insurgent groups for not attacking polling stations, and to reports that masked militants were guarding some of them.
Adnan Al-Dulaimi, the head of the main Sunni coalition known as the Iraqi Accordance Front openly thanked “resistance groups” in the days after the elections.
“They have stated that what they call ‘resistance’ has protected the ballot boxes in their areas. This is a confession that rigging has happened,” Al-Maliki said.
The harsh comments demonstrated the difficulty that Iraqi parties will face when they sit down to form a government after final results from the elections are released in early January. The officials added that the alliance had begun talks with other groups about the possibility of forming a “national unity” government.
