U.S. Denies Iraq Crash Claim
Iraqi Police Claimed 2 Dead In Chopper Crash; U.S. Says Mistaken
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Play CBS Video Video New Round Of Attacks In Iraq The latest insurgency attack missed in Iraq its intended target of a U.S. military convoy and hit a mini-bus filled with civilians instead; however, there were no deaths. Aleen Sirgany reports.
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Video Hope For Iraq In 2006 The new year in Iraq started off looking like the old one when 13 car bombs went off across the country. Kelly Cobiella looks ahead to a year that starts with the release of official election results.
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Iraqis search for the bodies of victims of an alleged U.S. airstrike in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2005. (AP)
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A police officer removes debris from the road after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) targeting a U.S. convoy hit a civilian vehicle in Baghdad, Iraq, on Monday, Jan. 2, 2006. One civilian was killed and two others were wounded in the attack. (AP)
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Iraqis crowd around the wreck of burned out vehicles at the site where a suicide car bomber detonated his explosives in Baghdad on Friday, Dec. 30. A suicide car bomber and a mortar killed six people and injured 23 people in two separate attacks Friday in downtown Baghdad, police said. (AP)
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Salaa Haider, 28, talks to a medic at a hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, on Friday, Dec. 30, 2005, after sustaining injuries from an exploding Improvised Explosive Device (IED) when he parked his car. (AP)
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Interactive Battle For Iraq The government, the insurgency, key players, background and photos.
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Interactive Attacks Map Details on the insurgency and terrorism that has continued to take lives since the fall of Saddam.
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Interactive To The Polls Iraqis vote for their first permanent, democratically-elected government. Find out what's at stake.
The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq has completed its investigation of almost 2,000 election complaints and will announce the findings Wednesday, commission member Hussein Hindawi told The Associated Press.
But the commission won't announce final election results until an international team finishes its work, meaning results might not be ready for two weeks, said commission member Safwat Rashid. Officials previously said final results of the Dec. 15 vote would be announced in early January.
The commission investigated 1,980 complaints, including 50 that were considered serious enough to alter results in some districts, an election official said.
The international team, which began its work Monday, agreed to review Iraq's elections after protests by Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups that the polls were tainted with fraud.
Preliminary results give the governing Shiite religious bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, a big lead but one that still would require forming a coalition with other groups.
As part of the bargaining for a new coalition government, President Jalal Talabani assured Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari that his fellow Kurds would not object if the United Iraqi Alliance — the Shiite religious bloc that won the most votes in the election — again nominates him for the post of prime minister.
But it was the agreement struck by Kurdistan regional President Massoud Barzani and representatives of the main Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance Front that opened the way for a new broad-based government. It also drew the ire of minority parties and secular groups.
"They will be part of a future government," said Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who sat in on the meetings.
Sunni Arabs and secular parties, such as the one headed by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a Shiite, have complained the elections were tainted by fraud and intimidation. They have demanded a new vote in some provinces, including Baghdad.
With the agreement, the Accordance Front seems to have broken a pact to only discuss those complaints during their meetings with the Kurds. Opposition groups are waiting for international monitors to assess the elections. The U.N. has called the vote credible.
The International Mission for Iraqi Elections said it helped monitor the elections in Baghdad and was assisted by monitors from countries of the European Union.
Hindawi said some members of the international team had begun working.
Rashid said that although his panel was separate from the international monitoring team, it would take into consideration the international team's findings before announcing results. "If they work hard, they might finish within a week," he said.
It took about two weeks to announce final results from interim parliamentary elections on Jan. 30, 2005.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
