U.N. official: Iraqi elections credible

A United Nations official said Wednesday that Iraq's recent parliamentary elections, which have given a strong lead to the Shiite religious bloc dominating the current government, were credible and that there was there was no justification in calls for a rerun.

In violence Wednesday, an inmate in a Baghdad prison grabbed an assault rifle from a guard and opened fire, killing eight people, police said. One American soldier was injured in the attempted prison break, the U.S. military said.

The Shiite bloc held talks with Kurdish leaders about who should get the top 12 government jobs, as thousands of Sunni Arabs and secular Shiites protested what they say was a tainted vote. Two Sunni Arab groups and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi National List have threatened a wave of protests and civil disobedience if fraud charges are not properly investigated.

In another of continuing political demonstrations across the country, more than 4,000 people rallied Wednesday in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, in favor of the major Sunni Arab party, the Iraqi Accordance Front. Demonstrators carried banners say "We refuse the election forgery."

The United Nations official, Craig Jenness, said at a news conference organized by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq that the U.N.-led international election assistance team found the elections to be credible and transparent. "Turnout was high and the day was largely peaceful, all communities participated."

Iraqi officials said they had found some instances of fraud that were enough to cancel the results in that place, but not to hold a rerun. There were more than 1,500 complaints made about the elections, with about 50 of them considered serious enough to possibly result in the cancellation of results in some places.

"After studying all the complaints, and after the manual and electronic audit of samples of ballot boxes in the provinces, the electoral commission will announce within the next few days some decisions about canceling the results in stations where fraud was found," said Abdul Hussein Hendawi, an elections official.

He said fraud had been discovered in the provinces of Baghdad, Irbil, Ninevah, Kirkuk, Anbar and Diyala.

Jenness said the number of complaints was less than one in every 7,000 voters. About 70 percent of Iraq's 15 million voters took part in the elections. He added that the U.N. saw no reason to hold a new ballot.

"Complaints must be adjudicated fairly, but we in the United Nations see no justification in calls for a rerun of any election," he said.