Al-Qaeda pledge to fight on despite Iraq election

Al-Qaeda's group in Iraq vowed today to continue its "holy war", slamming yesterday's historic elections seen as a success by the US-allied government as an "American game", according to an Internet statement.

"We in the al-Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in Iraq will continue the jihad (holy war) until the banner of Islam flutters over Iraq," said the statement posted on an Islamist website. The statement also attacked democracy as being un-Islamic.

"Starting from today, I will begin a new national dialogue to ensure all Iraqis have a voice in the new government," Mr Iyad Allawi said in a televised address, speaking at a conference centre once used by Saddam Hussein and his officials.

Iraq's interim prime minister, Mr Iyad Allawi after briefing reporters today.

"The whole world is watching us. As we worked together yesterday to finish dictatorship, let us work together towards a bright future - Sunnis and Shi'ites, Muslims and Christians, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen," Mr Allawi said.

The call was an attempt to seize the momentum created by thepoll, when electoral officials estimate around eight million Iraqis turned out to vote, confounding predictions many would be scared away by insurgent threats of a bloodbath.

But although Iraqis queued up enthusiastically to cast their ballots in many places, numbers appeared to be low in Sunni Arab areas where the insurgency is strongest - highlighting the dangerous communal rifts facing a new government.

Officials expect preliminary poll results in six to seven days and final results in about 10 days.

US President George W. Bush hailed the election as a "resounding success". He said the election showed Iraqis refused to be intimidated. "The Iraqi people have firmly rejected the anti-democratic ideology of the terrorists."

"It is time to put the divisions of the past behind us and work together to show the world the power and potential of this great country," said Mr Allawi, who has a chance of being renamed prime minister in the next government.

Shias, who make up about 60 per cent of Iraq's population, are widely expected to have won most votes in the election, and officials in the top Shia-led coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, have already claimed a degree of victory.

Shia leaders were quick to issue assurances that they plan to bring the Sunni minority, dominant under Saddam, into the political process.

"We are looking at ways of including Sunnis," said Mr Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, a former oil minister and candidate on the United Iraqi Alliance list.

"I doubt very much Iraq will witness a civil war in the short or long run. We reassure our brothers that any step Iraq takes must include all parts of Iraq. . . . No one can be left out."

Militants killed 35 people in suicide bomb and mortar attacks, but the death toll was far below what some had feared.

Election officials said the turnout had still surpassed expectations. They originally put it at 72 per cent but later said possibly eight million had voted - or just over 60 per cent of registered voters.

Interior Minister Mr Falah al-Naqib attributed the relative calm to a three-day security blitz, in which he said more than 200 suspected insurgents had been detained countrywide.

Iraq's interim prime minister vowed earlier to unite the country's competing ethnic and religious groups a day after millions of voters defied insurgents to cast ballots in the election.