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Results are slowly emerging in Iraq from last Saturday’s parliamentary elections. Anchor Marco Werman gets the latest from reporter Ben Gilbert, who’s in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman, this is The World.  Results are slowing emerging in Iraq from last Saturday’s Parliamentary elections.  Partial tallies are now available in seven of Iraq’s eighteen provinces.  The coalition of incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says it’s ahead.  Reporter Ben Gilbert is near Mosul in northern Iraq.  With results coming in slowly and only partial tallies available Ben, how confident can Prime Minister Maliki really be at this stage?  How confident should he be?

BEN GILBERT:  Well he can’t be confident at all.  There are challenges coming from a Shiite coalition in the southern provinces and the partial results from the southern provinces which are mainly Shiite, that that coalition is challenging from there and then from the more mixed provinces, or the Sunni provinces, he has Ayad Alawi, the former Prime Minister, challenging him there.  This is the first year that Sunnis have voted in Iraq’s Parliamentary elections, so Maliki, although one of his opponents told the wire services today that Maliki is actually ahead slightly, but still it seems to be very, very close so far with these partial results that we have.  But again, any coalition that’s going to develop out of these results is still going to have to cobble together other coalitions to make a majority.  Any of these coalitions at this point still have a good chance of forming a government.

WERMAN: And how smoothly is the vote count going?  Are election vote counters physically, actually counting paper ballots?

GILBERT: When I was actually in Kirkuk a couple days ago, they’re still counting, a very complicated process this new election because it’s different from the last one because not only are people voting for parties, or for slates basically is what they’re calling it here, but they’re also voting for individuals, so they’re voting for a party and an individual on this election, so it’s very complicated.  Election workers say it’s taking so long to count the votes because they’re trying to make it transparent.  It’s a very complicated process.  But as far as I can tell, U.N. officials who I spoke with and U.S. officials said that generally the errors that they say in this election were technical, they weren’t politically motivated, although there are charges flying all over the place right now from particularly the Ayad al-Alawi that there was fraud involving this election.  Of course, people would say anything they want, but there is a mechanism within the Iraqi system to register and prove these fraudulent claims.  So we’ll have to see how those weigh in as this develops.  But as far as I can tell, the international monitors who I spoke with said that the actual election itself is pretty clean and pretty fair as far as they could see.

WERMAN: And you’re currently embedded with some U.S. soldiers, what is their take on the election?  Is it looking at the election process as a gauge of when they get to go home?

GILBERT: Yes, absolutely.  The Americans here are obviously playing up that the elections were free and fair and that people are getting long and that the violence is down.  That’s their job, that’s their public relations job to make themselves look good and that’s what they’ve been saying.  I think when you really get down deep into it people realize that there are other serious issues here and they’re having to deal with the security aspects of that.  But the American troops here, the fob I’m on right now is, Forward Operating Base, I’m on right now is getting ready to be shut down, literally, in the next six months.  The soldier are complaining that the food is getting worse.  They’re not able to get spare parts for their trucks because they’re all going to Afghanistan, so there’s definitely a feeling that this is winding down.  There wasn’t too much violence on Election Day and that’s a good sign for things to come.  There’s a feeling of handing this off to the Iraqis.  The Americans won’t leave their base without an Iraqi escort these days, which is very different than when I was last here in 2006.

WERMAN: Reporter Ben Gilbert in northern Iraq, thank you so much.

GILBERT: Thanks so much.

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