Election results give Shiite alliance slight edge

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A Shiite alliance won a slim majority in Iraq's new National Assembly, according to certified election returns announced Thursday, but it may take weeks to form a government. Meanwhile, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi cautioned against excluding all Saddam Hussein's supporters.

Because a two-thirds majority in the 275-member parliament is required for confirming the top positions in the new government, the United Iraqi Alliance will have to make deals with the other parties. The alliance won 140 seats, while Kurdish parties got 75, secular Shiites took 40 and nine smaller parties shared 20, the final returns of the Jan. 30 elections showed.

Shiite and Kurdish leaders have already agreed that they must reach out to prominent Sunnis to participate in the government if they want it to be considered legitimate among Sunnis and to have any hope of ending the country's largely Sunni-led insurgency.

The Sunni-led Iraqis Party won only five seats in parliament, because many Sunni Arabs avoided the elections -- either out of fear of violence or to support a boycott call by radical clerics opposed to the U.S. military.

Allawi said the alliance must change its platform of purging Sunnis who were members of Saddam's Baath Party from government positions if it wants national unity.

"The alliance talks about de-Baathification. I hope if they get control and they're chosen to be the ones running the country, I sincerely hope that they revisit these issues in their program and re-discuss it with a view of having reconciliation and national unity," Allawi said.

"We cannot afford in this country, for now, to go on a route different to that of national unity," said Allawi, who spoke English in the interview. Otherwise, "it will throw the country into problems, severe problems."

The key challenge for the new government will be ending the insurgency that kills dozens of people every week. Most Iraqis say only negotiations will end the attacks.

A U.S. soldier was killed and three others were wounded in a car bomb attack while on patrol in the northern city of Mosul, the military said Thursday.

In Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi police killed two men with suspected links to al-Qaida's affiliate in Iraq and arrested five others during raids, the city's police chief said Thursday.