Deputy prime minister fails to win re-election

A U.N. official angered many Sunnis by backing the Dec. 15 elections.
combined dispatches
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Ahmad Chalabi once argued that Saddam Hussein had doomsday weapons and that Iraq needed liberation and democracy. With that new freedom, the people of Iraq have decided to vote him out of office.
Preliminary results of the Dec. 15 elections indicate that Chalabi, a deputy prime minister and secular Shiite who had been pegged as a possible prime minister in the next government, will not be re-elected to the new 275-member parliament, his office said Wednesday.
Before Saddam's ouster in 2003, Chalabi, then living in exile, was a favorite of the Defense Department and the U.S. Congress.
But he fell from grace after his claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction were discredited. U.S. forces last year raided Chalabi's Baghdad office after he was accused of giving U.S. intelligence to Iran.
In the months leading up to the recent election, however, the 60-year-old consummate insider had slowly been working his way back. In November, he met in Washington with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The top U.N. elections official in Iraq said Wednesday that the country's heavily criticized parliamentary election was "transparent, credible and good" and that he saw no reason to rerun it.
Defends results
The statement by Craig Jenness, a U.N. special commissioner, was the strongest independent endorsement of an election that has sparked accusations of rampant fraud and threats of increased insurgent violence during near-daily protests in cities across the country. Issued at the start of a news conference where Jenness appeared alongside officials from Iraq's election commission, his statement also amounted to a show of support for the beleaguered panel.
Since the Dec. 15 election, which preliminary results suggest was dominated in much of the country by the Shiite Muslim religious parties that control Iraq's transitional government, monitors and observers filed about 1,500 complaints with the election commission, many of which have been investigated.
The commission has fined some parties for violations and acknowledged mistakes by monitors. The commission's chairman, Abdul-Hussein Hendawi, said Wednesday that votes cast in the northern city of Kirkuk by tens of thousands of displaced ethnic Kurds were initially disqualified because of a mistake by an international elections official. The votes were eventually allowed, he said.
Inclusive government?
The Bush administration and many Iraqi officials hope the elections will lead to a broad-based government that will include minority Sunni Arabs as well as secular Shiites such as former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
"In our view, all communities of Iraq have won in these elections, all will have a strong voice in parliament. We hope the elections will be the start of a new process of strength and unity in Iraq," Jenness said.
One step in that direction came in western Anbar province, where a high-ranking Interior Ministry official made a rare appearance in Ramadi, which is considered a hot spot for Sunni-led insurgents.
Fahqer Maryosh, the third most senior official in the ministry, met with local and U.S. military officials to discuss the re-establishment of the Iraqi police in the province, Marine Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool said.
In yet another political demonstration, more than 4,000 people rallied Wednesday in Samarra, a predominantly Sunni Arab town 60 miles north of Baghdad. Demonstrators carried banners reading "We refuse the election forgery."
Prominent Sunni candidate Saleh al-Mutlaq, who has joined forces with Allawi's secular group to protest what they have described as rampant fraud, said he was angered by Jenness' remarks. He again demanded an independent review of about 1,500 complaints, including 50 or so deemed serious enough to affect the results in some areas.
"The U.N. stand provokes our astonishment because they have not responded to our complaints, which we have submitted," al-Mutlaq told The Associated Press by telephone. "This statement provokes anger and frustration."
He said without elaboration that the U.N. should "check our complaints and then express its views."