Questionable ballot boxes delay Iraq election results

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi officials Wednesday delayed the announcement of final results from landmark national elections because they said the election commission must recount votes from about 300 ballot boxes.\nAn undetermined number of other ballots were declared invalid because of alleged tampering, officials said. The ballots were inside 40 boxes and another 250 bags that were delivered to the central counting facility in Baghdad, he said.\nAmid spiraling post-election violence, gunmen killed an Iraqi journalist working for a U.S.-funded TV station and his 3-year-old son as they left their home Wednesday in the southern city of Basra, an official said. Two U.S. soldiers were reported slain in separate attacks.\nA Western legal expert said trials for members of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime will begin in several weeks before an Iraqi tribunal that could hand down sentences of death by hanging or firing squad.\nFinal results from the Jan. 30 balloting were to be announced Thursday. But spokesman Farid Ayar said the deadline would slip due to the need for a recount.\n"We don't know when this will finish," he said. "This will lead to a little postponement in announcing the results."\nAyar would not say where the 300 ballot boxes came from.\nCommission official Adel al-Lami said the ballots in the 40 boxes and 250 bags would not be counted because they appeared to have been stuffed inside them or, in some cases, improperly folded.\nSome of the boxes were not those approved by the commission, and others were improperly sealed, he said.\nCommission officials have previously said some ballot boxes were stolen by armed groups and returned to polling stations. Al-Lami said bribes were offered to staffers if they would accept the boxes, which he said came from different parts of Iraq.\nNo new partial results have been released since Monday for the voting for the 275-member National Assembly, 18 provincial councils and a regional parliament for the Kurdish self-governing region in the north.\nPartial results released Monday showed a coalition of Kurdish parties in second place. Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani already has announced his candidacy for president.\nThe ticket of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, is in third place among the 111 candidate lists. A Shiite-dominated ticket endorsed by Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, led with about half the votes, followed by the coalition of Kurdish parties.\nIf that reflects the final lineup it appears unlikely that Allawi, who favors strong ties to the United States and a tough stand against the insurgents, could emerge as a compromise choice for prime minister when the new assembly convenes by early March.\nIn Basra, Abdul Hussein Khazal al-Basri, the correspondent of Al-Hurra TV station, and his son were both killed Wednesday in the city's Maqal area, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, said Nazim al Moussawi, a spokesman for the local government administration.\nLaunched in February 2004, Al-Hurra, or "The Free," was tailored for Arab audiences to compete with other regional stations like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. President Bush said it was created to "cut through the hateful propaganda that fills the airwaves in the Muslim world," but some clerics have denounced the TV station for broadcasting its own brand of propaganda.\nAl-Basri also was a member of the political office of the Islamic Dawa Party, an influential Shiite movement, and the editor of a newspaper in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. He also headed the press office at Basra City Council, al-Moussawi said.\nA military statement said one U.S. soldier died Tuesday of a gunshot wound at a logistical support area in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. The second soldier was shot and killed Sunday while on patrol in Mosul, the U.S. command said.