January 17, 2006	Tuesday	Zilhaj 16, 1426

BAGHDAD, Jan 16: The body in charge of last month’s Iraqi elections announced on Monday it has cancelled a tiny number of ballots, paving the way for final but uncertified results to be issued later this week.

The news came as a court official said the trial of former president Saddam Hussein would resume next week without its chief judge who handed in his notice earlier this month following criticism over how he ran the court.

Initial indications showed Iraq’s major Shia bloc came out on top in the poll, but final results have been delayed by the electoral commission’s probe, which was launched after Sunni-backed and secular parties complained of fraud.

The commission said on Monday it has annulled the results of 227 ballot boxes out of a total of some 31,500 after finding evidence of fraud.

But ‘the number of votes annulled is not sufficient to change the overall result of the election’, commission member Abdul Hussein al Hindawi told a news briefing in Baghdad. He did not specify how many votes were cancelled.

Of the boxes cast aside, 167 were from Baghdad province, the most populated, which overwhelmingly supported the ruling Shia-religious parties.

A group of foreign monitors is also expected to publish the findings of its own separate investigation into the vote on Thursday.

Both announcements are seen as crucial to give further credibility to the election, with negotiations on forming a new four-year government delayed by the slow release of the certified results.

SADDAM’S TRIAL: An official at the Iraqi High Tribunal, which is trying Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants, said judge Rizkar Mohammed Amin ‘will certainly not be present at the hearing on Jan 24’ when the trial resumes.

The head of the tribunal, however, had yet to appoint his replacement, the official said.

“It could be Saeed al Hameesh,” the only other judge on the panel of five to have been publicly identified to date, he said.

Mr Amin handed in his notice more than six days ago.—AFP