A team of international monitors has said it is ready to visit Iraq
to review complaints that parliamentary elections held this month were
unfair.
There have been several complaints that the poll was marred by fraud
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The monitors' offer has been welcomed by leading Sunni
Arab and secular Shia parties, who have alleged that the vote was
marred by fraud and intimidation.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the UN also welcomed the proposal.
Early results suggest governing Shia parties have won the biggest share of the vote, followed by Kurdish groups.
The United Iraqi Alliance, the religious Shia bloc that
heads the current government, held talks on Thursday with Kurdish
leaders about forming a possible coalition.
The final result for the 15 December vote is not expected until early January.
It is not yet known if a review of the vote by the international monitors will delay the announcement of a result.
US praise
Iraq's main Sunni Arab party and relatively secular Shia
politicians have been demanding a re-run of this month's vote amid
indications that they have not fared well at the ballot box.
Supporters of opposition parties have protested against the vote
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Both parties have welcomed the offer by the
International Mission for Iraqi Elections, a group led by electoral
experts and commission members from around the world, to investigate
their complaints.
"We are optimistic with this international response and
hope that it will find a solution for this crisis," a spokesman for the
main Sunni Arab group, the Iraqi Accordance Front, told the Associated
Press.
The offer has also been welcomed in Washington by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
She praised Iraq's electoral authorities for inviting the international monitors.
"The electoral commission has once again demonstrated
its commitment to fair and credible elections that meet international
standards," she said.
Complaints
A UN spokesman echoed her comments, saying it was
essential that a "team of assessors, which was not involved in the
conduct of the elections, offers an independent evaluation of these
complaints".
An official for the Iraqi election commission told the
Associated Press news agency: "We are highly confident that we did our
job properly and we have nothing to hide."
Some 1,500 complaints have been lodged against the
elections, with some 50 of them grave enough to change the results in
some districts, the Associated Press news agency reports.
UN monitors who oversaw the election said it was largely free and fair.
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