Baghdad, May 03, 2010, SPA -- Iraqi officials began on Monday a recount of the 2.5 million ballots cast in Baghdad, a move requested by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who narrowly lost a parliamentary election held nearly two months ago. The parliamentary election was conducted on March 07, 2010. Since no one won an outright majority in the 325-seat legislature, all parties have been involved in intense talks to cobble together a majority to form the next government. The manual hand count, election officials say could take two to three weeks, according to a report of the Associated Press. At the downtown Rasheed hotel in the walled-off Green Zone, Iraqi elections officials hauled ballot boxes onto tables in a large hall early Monday morning and issued instructions to counters on how to proceed. Hundreds of election workers crowded into the hall and wiped the dust off the ballot boxes which have been kept for weeks in storage. They also inspected them for any sign of tampering. As U.N. monitors, officials from the Independent High Elections Commission and political party observers watched, the contents of the boxes were dumped on the tables and the counting began. Al-Maliki demanded recounts in five provinces. Just before the recount started, election commission spokesman Qassim al-Abboudi said that the other outstanding request for a recount by the main Kurdish bloc had been withdrawn. «Yesterday, the Kurdish alliance informed us officially of the withdrawal of their request for a recount in the provinces of Ninevah and Tamim to safeguard the national interest,» he said. --SPA 11:23 LOCAL TIME 08:23 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/776223