BAGHDAD, Oct 18: Iraqi election officials combed through ballots on Tuesday from the country’s historic constitutional referendum, but a senior official said the discovery of ‘anomalies’ in the vote should not affect the final outcome.

The checks delayed final results of the vote on a charter that seeks to frame democratic foundations for a new Iraq.

Confusion has surrounded the ballot count since Iraqis voted on Saturday, and election officials announced the results would be delayed after unusually high figures were reported.

“The first controls are now taking place,” in what would be a nationwide audit, a senior electoral official said.

“We are not ruling out technical error or fraud, but for now it is only a question of anomalies.”

Senior electoral commission member Abdul Hussein al Hindawi said there was no question of fraud, but that ballot boxes would be chosen at random and inspected, without focusing on specific provinces, to settle the issue once and for all.

“We just have to verify them, take a last look at the votes to have a clear conscience,” he said.

“We must respect international criteria,” Mr Hindawi added, stressing that the checks were being carried out alongside experts from the United Nations and that ‘we are talking to them with open minds’.

Problems with initial estimates sent to the Independent Electoral Commission were found in southern Shia-dominated provinces as well as in Kurdish areas in the north, where the numbers of ‘yes’ votes were higher than normal, the first source said.

Sunnis were largely opposed to the text, fearing it could lead to the break-up of Iraq and the placing of its vast oil wealth in the hands of Shias and Kurds.

“When you have more than 90 per cent ‘yes’, computers signal it immediately and there is a manual check. It means the figures must be looked at closely,” the source said.

Sunnis ‘appear to have played by the Rules’, it added.

The constitution will be adopted if a majority of voters approve it, but will be rejected if two-thirds of voters in three or more provinces are against the charter.

In Baghdad, workers bathed in pale neon light checked and rechecked vote counts, including those from the crucial northern city of Mosul that arrived on Monday and which Hindawi acknowledged were ‘very sensitive’.

The Sunni-dominated province of Salaheddin appeared to have already rejected the text, by around 80 per cent, but an estimate put the ‘yes’ vote in another principally Sunni province, Diyala, at 60 per cent.

Al Anbar and Nineveh provinces are also majority Sunni.

The volatile, western province of Al Anbar was expected to come down strongly against the charter, so Nineveh in the north which includes the mixed, restive city of Mosul, looked to hold the key.—AFP