Iraq Shiites talk with Kurds; grave found
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-28 08:30

More than 10,000 people, some carrying photos of Allawi, demonstrated in central Baghdad in favor of a government that would give more power to Sunni Arabs and secular Shiites. Marchers chanted "No Sunnis, no Shiites, yes for national unity!"

They are demanding that an international body review more than 1,500 complaints, warning they may boycott the new legislature. They also want new elections in some provinces, including Baghdad.

Two Sunni Arab groups and Allawi's Iraqi National List have threatened a wave of protests and civil disobedience if fraud charges are not properly investigated.

But the United Nations has rejected an outside review, and al-Hakim said his bloc and the Kurds also were against it.

Iraqi residents view a hole in which human bones were found in Kerbala, 270 km (160 miles) south of Baghdad, December 27, 2005.[Reuters]

The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq considers 35 of the complaints serious enough to change some local results. It said it began audits Tuesday of ballot boxes taken from about 7,000 polling stations in Baghdad province.

"This audit is not a random sampling of boxes or a re-count. It is a targeted review of specific ballot boxes taken from about 7,000 polling stations the IECI opened across Baghdad," the commission said, adding it was "in keeping with the IECI's policy of taking all complaints seriously and of conducting exhaustive investigations where warranted."

Meanwhile, the American military said two U.S. pilots died in a helicopter accident in western Baghdad on Monday night. The accident was under investigation; the military said no hostile fire was involved. At least 2,172 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In the Shiite holy city of Karbala, municipal workers doing maintenance work uncovered remains that police believed were part of a mass grave thought to date back to 1991, when Saddam's regime put down a Shiite uprising in the south.

The remains �� discovered Monday �� were sent for testing Tuesday in an effort to identify the bodies, said Rahman Mashawy, a Karbala police spokesman. He did not say how many bodies were found, and the police claim could not be independently verified.

Human rights organizations estimate that more than 300,000 people, mainly Kurds and Shiite Muslims, were killed and buried in mass graves during Saddam's reign, which ended when U.S.-led forces toppled his regime in 2003. Saddam and seven co-defendants are now on trial for the deaths of more than 140 Shiites after a 1982 attempt on Saddam's life in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad.

US Senator Arlen Specter, visiting Iraq on Tuesday, said he met with the chief judge overseeing Saddam's trial. Specter said he was disappointed in how the court has allowed the former leader "to dominate" the trial.

"You have a butcher who has butchered his own people, a torturer who has tortured his own people," Specter said. "The evidence ought to be presented in a systematic way, which would show that there's been quite an accomplishment in taking (Saddam) out as opposed to letting him be a bluster-bun and control the proceedings."

Specter also said a U.S. general told him that recently announced U.S. troop reductions had been in the works since April and that more are on the way.