SULEIMANIYAH, Feb 1: The main Kurdish alliance is set to win two-thirds of the vote in Iraq's tense northern oil centre of Kirkuk, officials said on Tuesday.

The alliance is also set to take a quarter of the seats overall in Iraq's new national assembly, giving the Kurds a major say in the drafting of a new post-Saddam Hussein constitution, one of its leaders told a Kurdish daily.

With just one district still to complete its count of Sunday's ballots, the Kurdish alliance has won 68 per cent of the vote in Kirkuk, the Kurdish weekly Hawlati (Citizen) said.

If confirmed, the result would give the Kurds 26 of the 41 seats on the provincial council, the paper said. The leader of one of the two factions that make up the alliance - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - said a higher-than-expected turnout across Kurdish areas was set to give it a quarter of the seats in the new assembly.

"Turnout exceeded our hopes and reached 90 per cent in some areas," Jalal Talabani told his party's Kurdistani Nwe newspaper. "We're expecting to take 25 per cent of the seats." But Mr Talabani sounded a conciliatory note towards Iraq's other ethnic and religious groups, promising that the Kurds would not abuse their weight in the new assembly. "Its most important task will be to draw up a constitution and we are counting on it taking into account everybody's wishes," he said.

Kurdistani Nwe editor Sherko Mangure said the Kurds now represented a "powerful force which needs to be taken into account in rebuilding Iraq". "We are in position to defend our rights in the drafting of the constitution," he said.

The two former rebel factions are determined to consolidate their hard-won autonomy in northern Iraq and extend it to all traditionally Kurdish-inhabited areas, including Kirkuk.

"The Kurdish districts must be returned to Kurdistan," top among them Kirkuk, said PUK deputy leader Noshirwan Mustafa. If not, "we will no longer be Iraqis", he warned. -AFP