BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's electoral commission today certified the results of the country's Jan. 30 elections and allocated 140 National Assembly seats to the United Iraqi Alliance, giving the Shiite-dominated party a majority in the new parliament.

The certification sets the stage for the first meeting of the National Assembly, which will have 10 months to draft a new constitution.

The assembly's first order of business will be to elect a president and two vice presidents to largely ceremonial positions. The assembly then will approve a prime minister nominated by the president and vice presidents.

The Shiite-led alliance's majority in the assembly had been expected, based on projections from the final results announced Sunday. The clergy-backed ticket won 48 percent of the vote and the Kurdish alliance received 26 percent of the vote, giving it 75 seats. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who supported strong ties to Washington, won 14 percent.

A redistribution of the votes from the 99 parties that did not win enough support to get parliament seats gave the Shiite alliance control of more than half of the assembly's 275 seats, even though they received slightly less than half the vote.

It appeared only 12 party groupings would take seats.

Even though the United Iraqi Alliance has a majority of seats in the assembly, it still needs partners. For example, a two-thirds majority is needed to select a president and two vice presidents, who will in turn choose a prime minister to run the day-to-day government.

The current appointed government will now set a date for installing the new elected government. There has been no indication of how long that might take, and the timeframe will depend on back-room dealmaking among the parties.

Carlos Valenzuela, the chief U.N. election expert in Iraq, said the elections results "exceeded our expectations."

Top Shiite politicians have agreed to choose their nominee for prime minister through a secret ballot, expected to take place Friday, to decide a two-man race between Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Ahmad Chalabi.

The contrast between the two candidates is stark and reveals a division within the clergy-endorsed alliance, made up of 10 major political parties and various allied smaller groups.

Al-Jaafari, 58, is the leader of the religious Dawa Party, one of Iraq's oldest parties, known for its popularity and close ties to Iran. Although al-Jaafari is a moderate, his party's platform is conservative.

Chalabi, 58, who left Iraq as a teen, leads the Iraqi National Congress and had close ties to the Pentagon before falling out of favor last year after claims he passed intelligence information to Iran.

A secular Shiite, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress is an umbrella for groups that included Iraqi exiles, Kurds and Shiites. Much of the intelligence his group supplied on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction programs failed to pan out.