Shiite alliance wins most seats in parliament

The election commission today announced that an alliance of Shiite religious parties won the biggest number of seats in Iraq’s new parliament, but too few to rule without coalition partners.

Sunni Arabs gained seats over the previous balloting.

Safwat Rasheed, an election official, announced that the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance captured 128 of the 275 seats in the December 15 election, down from the 146 it won in the January 2005 balloting.

A Sunni ticket, the Iraqi Accordance Front, won 44 seats. Another Sunni coalition headed by Saleh al-Mutlaq finished with 11 seats, Rasheed said. A few other Sunnis won seats on other tickets.

That will give the Sunni Arabs a bigger voice in the legislature than they had in the outgoing assembly, which included only 17 from the community which forms the backbone of the insurgency. Many Sunnis had boycotted the January vote.