Iraq PM leads in early results from oil hub Basra

A list led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had a wide lead in early results from the southern oil hub of Basra and a coalition led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi leads in the northern city of Kirkuk, the country's electoral commission said on Sunday.

Maliki's State of Law coalition had 219,657 votes compared to 121,497 for a fellow Shiite list, the Iraqi National Alliance, which has close ties to Iran.

Iraqiya, a secular, cross-sectarian alliance led by former Prime Minister Allawi, had 36,093 votes. The totals represented 63 percent of the vote in Basra province.

Iraq’s electoral commission said Allawi was leading in the northern city of Kirkuk, without giving more details.

So far, results have been released for 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces. The remaining four were set to be announced later on Sunday.

The latest figures were met with a frantic reaction in the national election commission's press room, as results from three provinces were put on one elevated flat-screen television.

The room is separated by a glass wall from a bank of computers where hundreds of election workers input data from tally sheets.

Lack of space on the screen forced election officials to scroll up and down on the surface to show all the figures, sparking shouts from assembled journalists who were furiously taking notes.

Election officials have pleaded for patience as vote tabulation has been slowed by persistent computer crashes, which again affected work on Sunday.

Sunday's tallies came a day after initial figures put Maliki comfortably in the lead in Baghdad, with the INA and Iraqiya neck-and-neck for second place in the election's main prize.

Along with Basra and Baghdad, State of Law is also ahead in the southern Shiite provinces of Babil, Najaf, Karbala and Muthanna, while the INA leads in Maysan and Diwaniyah, also mostly Shiite southern provinces.

Forming coalitions

Despite State of Law's success, however, analysts have warned that rival groups could still manoeuvre to form a coalition government without State of Law.

"There exists a desire to form an alliance between the INA and the Kurds, possibly also with Allawi," Baghdad University professor Hamid Fadhel told AFP on Saturday.

"They have all refused a long time to really see Maliki as the prime minister."

Iraq's election commission announced on Sunday that Iraqiya had a comfortable lead in Anbar, Iraq's biggest province by geography and the centre of a bloody insurgency in the early years of the U.S.-led occupation.

Elsewhere, Iraqiya leads in Nineveh and the mostly Sunni central provinces of Diyala and Salaheddin.

Meanwhile, Kurdistania, an alliance of the Kurdish autonomous region's two long-dominant parties, was in the lead in the northern Iraqi province of Dohuk, in the early results.

Earlier figures also put Kurdistania ahead in Arbil, seat of the Iraqi Kurdish regional government, while initial results are still awaited from Sulaimaniyah, the region's third province.

Qassim al-Abboudi, a senior election commission official, told reporters on Sunday that vote counts from each of Iraq's 18 provinces would top 60 percent on Monday.

Iraq's proportional representation electoral system makes it unlikely that any single grouping will clinch the 163 seats needed to form a government on its own, and analysts expect protracted coalition building.

There exists a desire to form an alliance between the INA and the Kurds, possibly also with Allawi. They have all refused a long time to really see Maliki as the prime minister.

Baghdad University professor Hamid Fadhel