IRAQ: The Bush administration's hopes for a government of national unity in Iraq, led by its favoured candidate, the secular and pro-western former prime minister Ayad Allawi, received a setback last night.
Preliminary results showed that most voters opted for Sunni and Shia religious parties in a parliament in which nationalists who want an early timetable for a withdrawal of US and British troops will have a stronger voice.
Mr Allawi's camp, which includes liberals, communists, and his own secular followers, cried foul yesterday, as did the main Sunni coalition known as the Consensus Front, which includes the Islamic party.
The election commission has at least a week to examine hundreds of complaints of violations on polling day, and this is likely to be followed by weeks of haggling over government posts.
But the results suggest that the Shia religious bloc which dominates the current government will retain most, if not all, the 140 seats it holds, giving it a majority in the 275-seat parliament. It needs two-thirds to choose a new Iraqi president, a mainly ceremonial post, along with a prime minister.
Senior Shia figures said yesterday that they would probably exclude Mr Allawi from government. "We've started talks with the Sunnis and Kurds. Not many of us are eager to take Allawi on board. I don't think he stands a chance," said Haider Abadi, spokesman for the Dawa party of the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Washington and London had been hoping Mr Allawi would emerge as a compromise candidate for the top post. During his years in exile in the Saddam Hussein period he had close links with the CIA and MI6.
As prime minister for nine months until April this year, his tough law-and-order image chimed well with US policy.
The US and British governments, which praised last week's poll as a triumph, are likely to paint the hung parliament the complaints of fraud, and the bargaining over portfolios as a further sign of healthy competition. But there was no disguising Washington's disappointment yesterday.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, said: "It seems sectarian identity and ethnic identity have played the dominant role." Although he went on to say the US would wait for "the principal groups to form a broad-based national unity government", it was not clear last night that they would. A Shia-Sunni-Kurdish alliance without Mr Allawi looked the most likely option.
The new parliament will include a higher number of anti-occupation nationalists. Moqtada al-Sadr, the young Shia cleric whose militia confronted US forces in Najaf last year, had some 30 candidates on the main Shia list. A more radical wing of his movement, running separately as "the Messengers", took another 3 per cent in the Shia south.
On the Sunni side a bloc known as the Front for National Dialogue led by Saleh al-Mutlak, a former Ba'athist, did better than expected.