"No democracy without real elections", "rigged polls", "down with the electoral commission" read a number of banners.
The demonstration was called by the Maram alliance, an Arabic acronym for the Conference Rejecting Rigged Elections which includes both Sunni Arab and secular factions, dissatisfied with the preliminary election results suggesting that the Shia-based religious parties will control the next parliament.
Ali Al Tamimi, a spokesman for the Maram alliance of some 42 parties and factions said the rally was meant to "show the Iraqi people's rejection of the ballot-rigging" in the election.
A similar demonstration was held in SADDAM HUSSEIN'S hometown of Tikrit, in the north of the country.
The leader of Iraq's main Shia party, Abdel Aziz Al Hakim, met on Tuesday in the north of the country with the leader of the Kurdistan regional government, Massoud Barzani, to discuss the setting up of a coalition government, Kurdish officials said.
Hakim, a cleric and the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the main Shia party in a majority Shia country, was also expected to address the Kurdish regional parliament in Arbil on Wednesday.
President Jalal Talabani's office announced that the president would hold meetings on Wednesday with the heads of all the major political coalitions, particularly the disaffected parties, in the northern town of Dokan in a bid to help set up a 'national unity' government.
The electoral commission has acknowledged receiving some 1,500 complaints, but says only a couple of dozens are "serious" enough to warrant possible annulment of some of the results.
Final election results are not expected before next week.
Meanwhile a top defense ministry official, Major General Abdel Aziz Mohammed Jassim, accused insurgents of spreading false information "to cast doubt on the fairness of the elections" and incite "disorder and riots".
In the northern city of Kirkuk, Turkmen and Sunni Arabs on Tuesday called on the US administration, the United Nations and the Arab League to investigate the results of the elections, especially in their region.
The oil-producing city hosts a delicate balance of Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmens.
"We want to send a message to Iraqi political forces and to the US administration and the UN that the Arab and Turkmen in Kirkuk stand alongside the national forces in rejecting the [election] results," Abdel Rahman Monshid Al Aasy, head of the Arab Council of Kirkuk.
Shia politicians on Saturday rejected the accusations of fraud and denounced the use of street pressure to try to overturn the results.
In the Shia city of Karbala on Monday, hundreds demonstrated in support of the election results and called for a new term for Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim Al Jaafari.
"We voted for who we wanted to represent us, in total freedom and without any fraud and we demand that our vote be preserved and not be thrown away," said demonstrator Mohammed Jassim Hussein, who carried a poster of Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani.
Meanwhile, two US pilots died when their military helicopter crashed in west Baghdad on Monday evening, the military said on Tuesday.
"There was no hostile fire involved," the military said in a statement, giving no details.
At least one more US soldier and 19 Iraqis were killed and dozens were wounded in a spate of attacks Monday, most of them targeting police units.
On Tuesday, three Iraqis, including an army colonel, were killed in separate attacks.
© 2005 Agence France-Presse
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