Preliminary results released on Monday from ballots cast by expatriate Iraqis and an early vote carried out for soldiers, hospital patients and prisoners, showed a coalition of Kurdish parties and the Shiite religious bloc each takes about a third of the vote.

Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq spokesman Farid Ayar said the results showed the Kurdistan Coalition List with more than 36 percent of the vote.

The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance won more than 30 percent.

But the ''Maram conference'' composed of political entities opposing to the preliminary results of elections, lashed out at the independent electoral commission of Iraq on Monday.

Dr Ali al-Tamimi is a spokesman for the conference.

''Regrettably, we have discovered along with Iraqi people who have eagerly taken part in the election process that this electoral commission is not independent as the staff of this commission all over the country are demanding the voters to elect this list rather than other lists.''

Iraqis do not vote for individual candidates, but instead for lists - or tickets - that compete for the seats in each of the 18 provinces.

Each list corresponds to the seats represented in parliament for each province. This province-by-province voting will determine 230 of the seats.

The remaining 45 will be decided nationwide.

All votes cast will be added up and divided by 275 to provide a national threshold number.

Any tickets which receive more votes than that threshold gets elected.

This provision is designed to help small and medium-sized tickets win representation.

(CRI.com December 27, 2005)