UNAMI says to provide tech. support for vote recount

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq will offer technical support for Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) on parliamentary election manual vote recount in Baghdad, according to the spokesman for UNAMI on Saturday. “The international organization’s role would be exclusively technical in line with the requests by the IHEC,” Saeed Erekat told IraqiNews.com news agency. “UNAMI highly trusts the work of the IHEC, which played its role so professionally during the recent parliamentary elections,” Erekat added. Iraq’s appellate body had decided on Monday (April 19) to launch a manual vote recount in Baghdad only after contests submitted by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawlat al-Qanoon (State of Law). Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s al-Iraqiya bloc had won the parliamentary elections held on March 7 with 91 seats, followed by Dawlat al-Qanoon with 89 seats, the Iraqi National Alliance (INA) led by Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) chief Sayed Ammar al-Hakeem with 70 seats and the Kurdistan Alliance with 43 seats out of a total 325 seats in the Iraqi parliament. AmR (P) 2