Iraqi Prime Minister fails to gain seats but still on track for power

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Sunday failed to grasp first place in Iraq's parliamentary election from his arch-rival Iyad Allawi after a recount confirmed there was no fraud in the March 7 ballot.
Maliki, the incumbent Shiite premier, had alleged that he lost thousands of votes, but election commission officials told AFP that a 12-day manual count of ballots cast in Baghdad had shown no change from the original results. The recount leaves the secular Iraqiya bloc of Allawi, himself a former Shiite premier, in the lead, but Maliki is in pole position to retain the top job after having formed a post-election coalition of Shiite groups.
Maliki's new movement needed four extra seats to gain a parliamentary majority but electoral official Saad al-Rawi said there was "no change in the number of seats for any coalition in Baghdad, and in all of Iraq."
The conclusion of the Baghdad recount - Iraq's biggest province in which 68 seats were at stake - removes a major hurdle to the country forming its next government and paves the way to choosing its new leaders.
More than two months after the nation-wide poll, no group has yet assembled a parliamentary majority of 163 seats, with results that were initially expected a month ago delayed over accusations of tampering and fraud.
Rawi's and two other accounts of the Baghdad recount given to AFP were later officially confirmed at a press conference in the Iraqi capital.
Only 3,000 of around 2.5 million ballots - barely 0.1 percent - were allotted differently as a result of the recount, an electoral official said.
The unchanged results mean that Iraqiya remains in first place with 91 seats, followed closely by Maliki's State of Law alliance with 89. The Iraqi National Alliance (INA), led by Shiite religious groups, was third with 70.
Sunday's announcement of the results came a day after Maliki took a key step toward staying in power when top Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said he would not block the incumbent from keeping his job. A spokesman for Sadr, who is currently living in Iran, told AFP the movement would drop a veto against Maliki seeking a new term as long as he met its condition that Sadrist prisoners be freed.