[Al Arabiya Latest] Former premier Iyad Allawi's secular Iraqiya bloc won the most seats in Iraq's March 7 parliamentary election, two more than incumbent Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's bloc, official results showed Friday.Iraqiya won 91 seats in the 325-member Council of Representatives, compared to the 89 won by the State of Law Alliance led by Maliki, a fellow Shiite, election officials said. The Iraqi National Alliance, a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, came third with 70 seats. Kurdistania, comprised of the autonomous Kurdish region's two long-dominant blocs, won 43 seats.
"We congratulate the Iraqi people, the Iraqi government," said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley. "It's a significant milestone in the democratic development of Iraq."
Allawi's victory in the March 7 poll signals he will be given the first opportunity to form a government, which would require a coalition holding at least a majority of 163 seats.
Maliki said after the results were released that he was on the way to forming the biggest bloc in parliament.
But any attempt to sideline Allawi in what could be weeks or months of perilous negotiations to form a new government could be taken as a slight by Sunnis shunted to the political wilderness when Iraq's majority Shiites rose to power following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Maliki said he believed the results were not final.
"For sure, we will not accept these results," Maliki told a news conference.
The results released on Friday represented a 100 percent preliminary count of the votes, but the final results, which have to be certified by a court, could take weeks.
The potential power vacuum and likely instability during the coalition negotiations will be watched closely by Washington as the U.S. military prepares to formally end combat operations by Sept. 1 and pull its troops out by the end of 2011, and also by global oil firms that inked multibillion-dollar contracts to refurbish Iraq's rich but dilapidated oilfields.