Election commission rejects PM's call for recount

Iraq's election commission has rejected a call by incumbent Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for a manual recount of votes cast in the country's 7 March parliamentary polls. Maliki's main challengers, the Iraqiya opposition bloc, condemned the demand as a "clear threat".

Officials in Kirkuk count votes in Iraq's parliamentary elections. Reuters

Iraqiya, led by former prime minister Iyad Allawi, is neck-and-neck with Maliki's State of Law Alliance in the race to be the biggest grouping in parliament.

The latest results, which are based on 92 per cent of ballots cast, show the State of Law Alliance trailing the Iraqiya bloc by less than 8,000 votes nationwide.

The statement from Maliki's office on Sunday calling for a recount comes a week after the prime minister said election complaints were very small and could not affect the results.

Maliki advisor Ali al-Mussawi said the count had been proceeding properly until two-thirds of votes were tabulated, at which point "numbers were jumping illogically".

But Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) rejected the request, saying a recount by hand would take "too long".

"If they have doubts and think that there are errors, they can ask us to hold recounts at particular centres, but not across all of Iraq," commission chief Faraj al-Haidari told AFP.

Senior Iraqiya candidate Intisar Allawi, a relative of the bloc's leader, denounced Maliki's remarks as a "clear threat against the commission" prompted by the news that Iraqiya had taken the lead in the national vote tally.

A recount would mean a delay of several months, Intisar Allawi said, warning of a potentially damaging "political vacuum".

Final election results will be published on 26 March, the country's election commission said on Sunday.