THE challenge by Iraq’s Shiite prime minister to election results that showed him coming in a close second to his chief rival — Sunni-backed Ayad Allawi — is a risky tactic.

If Nouri al-Maliki succeeds in his attempt to block the secular Shiite Allawi from forming a coalition government, it would leave the minority Sunni Arabs seething. That could undermine the credibility of Iraq’s nascent democracy and unleash a new bout of sectarian violence just as the US is preparing to pull all its troops out of the country.

Final results of the March 7 election released Friday showed Allawi’s Iraqiya coalition winning 91 parliamentary seats, thanks to heavy support by Sunnis and al-Maliki’s Shiite-led bloc with 89. Neither won an outright majority in the 325-seat parliament, but Allawi is entitled to the first shot at forging a ruling coalition.

Al-Maliki, who has led a government dominated by religious Shiites for the past four years, quickly demanded a hand recount of all ballots and adamantly refused to accept the results, even though international observers said the vote was fair and transparent.

“The prime minister must accept the election results and leave his office peacefully,” said Mishaan al-Siaidi, a senior Iraqiya candidate. “His rejection of the election results is a rejection of the votes cast by Iraqis and his manoeuvring is a manoeuvre around the will of Iraqis.”

Allawi said Saturday he was worried about the growing sectarian rhetoric in Iraq since the election. And in a sign that the tensions may already be spilling over into sectarian violence, several bombs exploded Sunday near a house linked to a prominent Sunni figure who ran for election as part of Allawi’s coalition. Five people were killed but the politician survived the bombings in the town of Qaim in western Iraq.

Allawi’s victory at the head of a group supported by both Sunnis and Shiites suggested millions of Iraqis are looking for a change from the politics that have been dominated by the two major Islamic sects.

It also showed many are suspicious of Iranian influence. Allawi was widely seen as closer to the region’s Arab governments than to neighbouring Shiite Iran.

Al-Maliki followed his challenge of the results by seeking court rulings and other manoeuvres aimed at securing a second term for himself and maintaining the political dominance of religious Shiite parties. However, those moves could put Iraq at risk of plunging back into the bloodbaths of 2006 and 2007, when thousands of Shiites and Sunnis lost their lives in tit-for-tat attacks.

Most importantly, al-Maliki is now believed to be seeking a merger with the other major Shiite-led bloc — the Iraqi National Alliance with 70 seats — to form the nucleus of a potential coalition government. It is a move that appears designed to perpetuate sectarian politics, with the Shiites continuing to dominate the political landscape and the Sunnis left powerless or with token representation.

The INA is dominated by hard-line Shiites with close links to Iran. Foremost among them are supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, a fiery anti-American cleric whose Mahdi Army militia is blamed for many of the sectarian killings in 2006 and 2007.

The alliance between the two major Shiite blocs would be potentially explosive, replicating the make-up of al-Maliki’s government and that of his predecessor, the Shiite Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Both men oversaw Iraq during its worst violence since the 2003 US-led invasion.

Iraqi analyst Kadhum al-Muqdadi said such a partnership would disappoint Iraqis who wanted to see change through Allawi.

“It will mean four more years of the same faces, same political situation and same approach,” he said.

Al-Maliki also appears to be trying to change the rules of the game in his favour.

According to the constitution, the president asks the bloc with the most seats in parliament to form a government. But before the final results were announced, al-Maliki asked the Supreme Court to define what the largest bloc means.

The ruling, made public the day final results were released, allows a coalition formed after the election through negotiations with other blocs to qualify as the largest bloc. That would appear to give al-Maliki room to nudge out Allawi and is widely seen in Iraq as biased in favour of al-Maliki.

The prime minister also said he would demand that several Iraqiya candidates elected to parliament be disqualified for their suspected ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime, another move that raised the sectarian tensions.

Hundreds of candidates, many of them Sunni and including senior Iraqiya politicians, had already been barred by a Shiite-led committee from running because of their alleged links to Saddam’s regime. The move angered the Sunnis who saw it as an attempt to undermine their election prospects.

Iraq’s Sunni militants have in the past responded to their community’s perceived marginalisation by stepping up attacks against Iraqi and US forces as well as Shiite civilians.

With the Americans now busy planning the withdrawal of all combat forces by late summer and the remainder of the current 95,000 troops by the end of 2011, there will be no buffer between the two sides.

Ahmad Chalabi, a senior Shiite politician who has been mentioned as a possible compromise candidate for prime minister, predicted Sunday that the two main Shiite blocs would eventually agree on forming a government, though they have deep differences.

“They were together for a long time in opposition and they were together in government,” Chalabi told The Associated Press in an interview. “It’s a winning combination.”

He said al-Maliki would not necessarily be the prime minister if the merger went ahead.

“I don’t think he will jeopardise the entire alliance for personal ambitions.”

Such a deal would significantly eat into Allawi’s room for manoeuvre to form the government.