Stage set for Iraqi talks on coalition

"Iraq"

01/23/2006

Richard Boudreaux,
Los Angeles Times
Last update: January 21, 2006 – 12:49 AM

BAGHDAD - The Shiite Muslim and Kurdish parties leading Iraq failed to win enough seats in last month’s parliamentary election to form a new government on their own, complete returns showed Friday, setting the stage for U.S.-backed talks aimed at bringing Sunni Arabs and other minority parties into a broader ruling coalition.

The vote tally confirmed the pre-eminence of a Shiite alliance led by two Iranian-backed religious parties, which won 128 of the parliament’s 275 seats. The next largest bloc, 53 seats, went to Kurdish parties, which again are expected to join the Shiites as junior partners in running the country.

Yet their combined total of 181 seats was three seats shy of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify the makeup of a new government, and far fewer than most optimistic Shiite forecasts immediately after the Dec. 15 election. Smaller parties seized on the outcome to demand a share of power in negotiations that are expected to play out for weeks.

The stakes are high. U.S. officials aim to broker a significant Sunni role in the next government—Iraq’s first with a full four-year term since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein—in the hope of undermining the Sunni-led insurgency and allowing U.S. troops to go home.

Iraqi troops and police sealed off all roads Friday between Baghdad, the capital, and the restive provinces of Anbar, Salahuddin and Diyala, trying to discourage any insurgent attacks planned to coincide with the Iraqi electoral commission’s announcement of returns.

The 10.9 million Iraqis who went to the polls Dec. 15, a turnout of 70 percent, voted sharply along ethnic and sectarian lines. Friday’s returns underscored that, as well as the sharp decline of more moderate secular rivals favored by Washington.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad called on the leading Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni and secular parties to form an all-inclusive government. Khalilzad, who is expected to play a mediating role, said the parties “must come together to reinforce their commitment to democratic principles and national unity.”

Diplomats in touch with the contending parties said the fragmented vote favored such an approach. The Shiite and Kurdish blocs, which had more than two-thirds of the seats in the interim parliament elected a year ago, fell below that mark this time.

Sunnis dominated Iraq under Saddam’s rule. After boycotting last January’s election and shutting themselves out of the interim government, Sunni parties will enter the negotiations with 55 seats divided between two blocs.

The Iraqi Accordance Front, backed by influential Sunni clerics, won 44 of those seats; the others went to the more militant Iraqi Front for National Dialogue. Sunnis had 17 seats in the outgoing legislature, none representing major parties.

The Sunnis’ gains came at the expense of Shiites, Kurds and secular parties.

The Iraqi National List, led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite politician who was the U.S.-appointed prime minister from June 2004 until April, won 25 seats, dropping from 40 seats in the previous assembly. Two other secular parties in the race won just four seats between them.

A party led by interim Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite once favored by the Bush administration to rule after Saddam, failed to win a seat.

The remaining seats went to ethnic and sectarian-based splinter groups—five to the Islamic Union of Kurdistan, two to the Shiite-based Progressive Party, one each to parties representing the Turkoman and Christian minorities, and one to the Yazidi religious sect.

Returns by the numbers

Broken down among Iraq’s 18 provinces, the returns portrayed a starkly polarized country.

Shiite religious parties got 41 percent of the nationwide vote and three-quarters of the vote in each of the nine largely Shiite provinces in the south; Kurdish parties won 21 percent of the overall vote and nearly 90 percent in Iraqi Kurdistan—the three largely autonomous Kurdish provinces in the mountainous north.

The two Sunni tickets gained 19 percent of the total vote, roughly in line with the proportion of Sunnis among Iraq’s population. They won 91 percent of the vote in western Anbar Province, the insurgent heartland, and roughly half in Diyala, Salahuddin and Ninewah provinces, also home to large Sunni populations.

Secular parties won less than 10 percent of the vote nationally.

Baghdad’s mixed population voted 57 percent for the Shiite alliance and 23 percent for the Sunni tickets.

In Kirkuk, 53 percent of the voters favored the main Kurdish bloc, which seeks incorporation of the ethnically mixed, oil-rich region into Kurdistan. The vote was a measure of the Kurds’ success in resettling the city of Kirkuk, reclaiming land from which Saddam ousted their families and gave to Arabs.

Some Sunni parties and Allawi’s group have claimed they were cheated by systematic vote fraud and called unsuccessfully for a re-run of the elections. They will have four days to present final challenges, and officials will have 10 days to respond before certifying final results.

Meanwhile, Shiite leaders and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, have endorsed the need for a broad coalition government in order to stabilize the country. But they also have obstacles that might thwart that goal.

Several Shiite leaders said in interviews this week, for example, that their victorious coalition would not give up control of the Interior Ministry and the police. Some said they favored giving the Defense Ministry to a Kurd; it is now run by a secular Sunni.