Strains ease,no clear poll winner in Iraq wild west

By Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Local elections produced no clear winner in Iraq's western desert, once the heartland of the Sunni Islamist insurgency against the U.S. invasion, but tribal chiefs who had threatened war if they did not win said they were satisfied with the result.

In the rest of the country, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's allies triumphed across the Shi'ite Muslim south and in the north, Sunni Arabs clawed back some power from ethnic Kurds, preliminary results from the regional vote showed on Thursday.

But in Anbar province, the battle in the Jan. 31 provincial vote was between Sunni groups, restless in post-invasion Iraq after dominating the country under Saddam Hussein.

A group led by secular Sunni politician Saleh al-Mutlaq won with 17.6 percent in Anbar, and U.S.-backed tribal leaders who helped oust al Qaeda came next with 17.1 percent.

Candidates backed by their religious rivals, the incumbent Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), came third at 15.9 percent.

In the days before the results, the tribal chiefs who head U.S.-funded neighbourhood patrols called "Awakening Councils" had accused the Islamic Party of trying to steal the vote and had vowed to take up arms if it was allowed to win.

"We are satisfied with the results of the election," one of the Awakening leaders, sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, told Reuters on the telephone, before he was drowned out by wild celebrations in the background at his home in the provincial capital Ramadi.

"We are not wary of the victory of the al-Mutlaq list because we have already agreed with him to form an alliance. But we are not giving up our complaints against vote fraud that we submitted to (the electoral commission)."