BAGHDAD, Iraq – A senior U.N. official said yesterday that Iraq’s parliamentary elections were credible and the results should stand, angering Sunni Arabs who have taken to the streets demanding a new vote.

The U.N. endorsement, which came after opposition groups demanded international intervention, was likely to deflate their calls for the elections to be canceled. It also was likely to move Sunni Arabs and secular Shiites closer to the bargaining table ahead of final results, expected to be announced next week.

Preliminary results, which gave a big lead to the ruling Shiite religious bloc, also indicated that a former Washington insider, Deputy Prime Minister Chalabi, will not be re-elected to the new 275-member parliament, his office said.

Before the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Mr. Chalabi, then living in exile, was a favorite of the Defense Department and Congress. A secular Shiite, he fell from grace after his claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction were discredited.

American forces last year raided Mr. Chalabi’s Baghdad office after he was accused of giving American intelligence to Iran, but the 60-year-old consummate insider had slowly been working his way back.

The U.N. official, Craig Jenness, said at a news conference organized by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq that his U.N.-led international election assistance team found the elections to be fair.

“The United Nations is of the view that these elections were transparent and credible,” Mr. Jenness, who is a Canadian electoral expert, said.

Mr. Jenness said the number of complaints was less than one for every 7,000 voters. About 70% of Iraq’s 15 million voters went to the polls.

His remarks came as crucial support for Iraqi election commission officials, who refused opposition demands to step down. They, too, said the elections were free and fair and that they would deal with the few instances of fraud and rigging of ballot boxes.

“No wide, premeditated, and systematic fraud was noticed,” an IECI official, Safwat Rashid, said.

The Bush administration and many Iraqi officials hope the elections will lead to a broad-based government that will include minority Sunni Arabs as well as secular Shiites such as former interim Prime Minister Allawi.

“In our view, all communities of Iraq have won in these elections, all will have a strong voice in parliament. We hope the elections will be the start of a new process of strength and unity in Iraq,” Mr. Jenness said.

One step in that direction came in western Anbar province, where a high-ranking Interior Ministry official made a rare appearance in Ramadi, considered a hot spot for Sunni-led insurgents.

The no. 3 official in the ministry, Fahqer Maryosh, met with local and American military officials to discuss the re-establishment of the Iraqi police in the province, Marine Captain Jeffrey S. Pool said.

In yet another political demonstration, more than 4,000 people rallied yesterday in Samarra, a predominantly Sunni Arab town 60 miles north of Baghdad. Demonstrators carried banners reading, “We refuse the election forgery.”

A prominent Sunni candidate, Saleh al-Mutlaq, who has joined forces with Mr. Allawi’s secular group to protest what they have described as rampant fraud, said he was angered by Mr. Jenness’s remarks. He again demanded an independent review of about 1,500 complaints, including 50 or so deemed serious enough to affect the results in some areas.

Iraqi officials said they had found some instances of fraud that were enough to cancel the results in some places but not to hold another vote in any district.

Mr. Allawi said the election commission should also take into account political violence before the vote.

But Mr. Jenness said the U.N. saw no reason to hold a new election.

Preliminary results from the vote have given the governing Shiite religious bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, a big lead – but one that still would require forming a coalition with other groups.

The Shiite bloc held further talks with Kurdish leaders yesterday and said preparations were being made to choose a candidate for prime minister, who they have said must come from the United Iraqi Alliance.

Alliance officials have indicated the likely candidates for prime minister are Prime Minister al-Jaafari, who heads the Islamic Dawa party, and Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who belongs to the other main Shiite party,the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Also yesterday, inmates stormed a prison armory in Baghdad, with one grabbing an AK-47 rifle from a guard and firing indiscriminately. They killed eight people, including four guards, before being subdued.