BAGHDAD, Feb 7: Iraq's main Shia alliance remained on course on Monday for a major victory in the country's election as new results from the agonizingly slow count showed the main Kurdish coalition now in second place.

With more than half of the votes now counted, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, should get an absolute majority in the 275-member national assembly.

The two main Kurdish parties campaigned together for the Jan 30 vote and the electoral commission said their list took 1,075,534 votes from Dohuk and Suleimaniyah - two of the three provinces in the Kurdish autonomous region.

This was almost 93 per cent of the votes counted so far in the two provinces.

The alliance of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party is virtually assured of second place in the national election, behind the UIA.

The main Shia list now has 2,244,237 votes out of about 4.36 million votes counted so far, according to figures released on Monday.

The commission has estimated that about eight million people voted in the election.

Though its share has fallen to about 51 per cent of the vote, the UIA should still get an absolute majority in the assembly as many of the votes still to be counted were cast in Shia strongholds in southern Iraq.

The list was even a surprise leader in the mainly Sunni province of Salaheddin, north of Baghdad. Sunni leaders had urged a boycott of the election and the Shia alliance led in the count with more than 27,000 votes, just ahead of the Kurdish coalition.

The total number of registered voters in Salaheddin is not known, but figures provided after votes were counted from 80 per cent of the province's polling stations showed that only 124,000 people had voted - a very low turnout.

Salaheddin includes Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit and the other Sunni cities of Samarra and Baiji, all of which have seen large-scale attacks on occupation forces.

The list of interim prime minister Iyad Allawi is now in third place overall with 596,323 votes, about 13.6 per cent of those counted so far.

In fourth place is the National Independent Cadres and Elites, led by Fathallah Ghazi Ismail, a follower of radical Shia leader Moqtada Sadr, whose forces battled the US military for several months last year.

The party of interim President Ghazi al Yawar, a Sunni, was fifth and the communist party sixth.

Commission official, Izzedin al Mahmudi, would not commit to a firm date for the release of a final result. He said at a press conference it would be "in a few days" and hopefully by the Feb 10 deadline the commission gave on Friday.

None of the officials at the press conference gave any explanation for the slow pace of the count, which is being carried out at the commission's Baghdad headquarters.

The commission said an inquiry had found irregularities with some 40 ballot boxes used in Nineveh province around the main northern city of Mosul. It said the 40 ballot boxes "have led to complaints and appeals, or were not sealed in conformity with the instructions, which obliged us to transfer them to the national office in Baghdad to open a probe."-AFP