BAGHDAD, Feb 2: Influential Sunni religious leaders on Wednesday branded Iraq's election illegitimate as the electoral commission admitted there were flaws in the vote.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice predicted a new spirit of international cooperation for Iraq after the elections on Sunday, but she refused to speak of a US exit strategy.

On the ground, insurgents renewed their attacks after a period of relative calm following the polls with a high turnout despite a string of bombings and mortar attacks that killed at least 36 people.

Iraq's President Ghazi Al-Yawar said on Tuesday it would be "complete nonsense" to ask US and other foreign troops to leave the country now. As the massive security election clampdown was eased, a Shia political leader escaped an assassination attempt in the holy city of Najaf, at least eight people were killed in a string of attacks around the so-called Sunni triangle and an oil pipeline was sabotaged.

Iraqi and US officials have urged the country's various communities to unite after the polls, the first since Saddam Hussein was toppled in a US-led war in 2003. But the Committee of Muslim Scholars, the premier organization of Sunni religious leaders across Iraq, poured cold water on hopes for an end to the community's hard line stance against the US-imposed experiment of democracy in Iraq.

The association, which called for a Sunni boycott of the election, said the next government would lack the authority to write a new constitution laying out the framework for a post-Saddam future.

"These elections lack legitimacy because a huge portion of the population boycotted and this tells us the national assembly and the coming government will not have the legitimacy required for writing the constitution, or concluding security and trade agreements," the committee said.

It stopped short of slamming the door and offered a tentative olive branch to the next government in acknowledgement of the millions of Iraqis who braved Sunday's violence, saying it would have "limited authority".

As Iraq waited for the final vote tally, the election commission said it was investigating remedies to the fact that tens of thousands of people were unable to vote due to a shortage of ballot papers.

Yawar told a press conference on Tuesday that "tens of thousands were not able to vote for the lack of ballots", with the problems mainly in Mosul, Basra, Baghdad and Najaf.

Abdul Hussein al-Hindawi, chairman of the electoral commission, also acknowledged problems in Sunni areas where polling stations had not opened or not enough ballots had been distributed in Nineveh, Salaheddin and Tamim provinces.

In an effort to reach out to the disenchanted Sunni population, Yawar, a tribal sheikh from Mosul, insisted there was consensus that his post would be retained by his fellow Sunnis in the next cabinet. -AFP