Iraq Shi'ites seal power

BAGHDAD - Iraq's Shi'ite Islamists have been confirmed in power by election results that gave them a near-majority and opened the way for US-backed negotiations with Kurds and Sunni Arabs on a national unity government.

With Baghdad all but sealed off by security forces on alert for attacks by Sunni rebels who accused the ruling Shi'ite Alliance of cheating in last month's poll, two civilians were killed in one of several bomb attacks on US and Iraqi patrols.

In restive Ramadi, insurgents fired rockets at US and Iraqi bases, causing some minor injuries, the military said. There was celebratory gunfire in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf.

Troops and police blocked off roads between Baghdad and the restive provinces of Anbar, Salahaddin and Diyala and were also hunting kidnappers who threatened to kill an American journalist by a Friday deadline; leading Sunni Arab figures joined Jill Carroll's family and colleagues in calling for her release.

Despite angry reactions to the rejection of their complaints about the December 15 vote, many Sunni political leaders, who boycotted last year's interim assembly but now have a fifth of the 275 seats in the new parliament, are already discussing places in a grand coalition with the Shi'ites, Kurds and others.

"Now that the results are out we're going to start serious talks in Baghdad to form a national unity government based on these results," Alliance official Abbas al-Bayati said, adding that meetings could begin as soon as Saturday.

Sunni politician Hussein al-Falluji, accusing US officials of pressuring international monitors to cover up massive fraud, said negotiations would be tough but would go ahead.

Hardliner Saleh al-Mutlak, who shares rebel aims, said: "If we can agree with our brothers on a national patriotic project to ensure the unity of Iraq, we will be part of the government."

US HOPES

The US ambassador, who coaxed and cajoled rival factions into a constitutional deal last year, called on Iraq's sectarian and ethnic communities to come together now to form a government that includes all the main groups. Washington hopes consensus can staunch the bloodshed and let it bring its US troops home.

"Iraq's political parties and their leaders must come together to reinforce their commitment to democratic principles and national unity," said President George W. Bush's envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, echoing the UN representative in Baghdad.

A major challenge ahead will be making good on a promise, extracted by Khalilzad, that Shi'ites and Kurds will review the new constitution this year to meet Sunni objections to it.

The final results, which parties have two days to challenge, were in line with a profusion of earlier provisional data.

They gave the Alliance 128 seats, 10 short of retaining the slim majority it had in the interim assembly elected a year ago in a vote boycotted by most Sunnis, who won just 17 seats.

The main Kurdish bloc won 53 seats, down sharply on much higher national turnout of over 75 per cent, compared to 58 per cent. Two Sunni groups shared 55 seats, winning 44 and 11 places each.

Former premier Iyad Allawi's secular list has 25 seats and seven groups comprising Kurds, Sunnis, Shi'ites, ethnic Turkmen and Christian and Yazidi sects won from one to five seats each.

HOSTAGES

US forces rejected the demand of Carroll's captors that women prisoners be freed. As the kidnappers' deadline neared, Sunni leaders joined her family in urging her release.

After heavy media coverage in the United States, Adnan Dulaimi called for the release of the 28-year-old Carroll by kidnappers who set a 72-hour ultimatum in a video on Tuesday.

"Release this journalist who strived for Iraq, defended Iraqis and condemned the war in Iraq," Dulaimi, whose office Carroll had just left when she was kidnapped on January 7, told a news conference. Her translator was killed in the ambush.

US officials insist there are no plans to release women, despite remarks to the contrary by the Iraqi Justice Ministry.

The reporter's father, Jim Carroll, addressed her captors on Arabic satellite television Al Jazeera: "My daughter has no influence, she doesn't have the power to free anyone."

There was also no word on the fate of other foreign hostages, among thousands of people abducted for money or political goals since the US invasion of 2003.

The families of two Kenyan telephone engineers seized in a Baghdad ambush two days ago also made an appeal, saying Moses Munyao and George Noballa only went to Iraq to earn a living.

US and Iraqi forces have been bracing for violence around the results, both from local Sunni nationalists who had observed a cease-fire in the hope of a strong showing in the election and from al Qaeda-linked Islamists opposed to US-backed democracy.

A senior Iraq military source said security forces had foiled an insurgent plot to mount a mass assault on the Baghdad headquarters of Alliance leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a hate figure for many Sunnis suspicious of his ties to Iran.

- REUTERS