SULAIMANIYA/ARBIL: An up-and-coming Kurdish party expects to capture seats in Iraq's next parliament from entrenched rivals, its leader said after Sunday's national poll, threatening to upset the country's most cohesive bloc.

A robust showing by the reformist Goran list could hurt the alliance of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) as they prepare to negotiate for a role in the next Iraqi government.

Such an outcome could weaken their hand against the Arab-led government in bitter feuds over oil, land and power. The two parties warned they might not accept the election result.

Preliminary results in the polls are not expected until Monday at the earliest, but the Goran, which means "Change" in the Kurdish language, predicted it could pick up at least 20 of Iraqi Kurdistan's seats in Iraq's 325-member parliament.

"We are expecting to win a large number of seats that the Kurds will get in the Iraqi parliament," Goran leader Noshirwan Mustafa told Reuters in an interview.

If the prediction proved true, it would mark a political earthquake in Kurdistan, which the KDP and PUK have ruled jointly with virtually no competition since Kurds got defacto autonomy from the rest of Iraq in 1991.

Goran surprised the political elite in July, when it took a quarter of the 111 seats in the regional parliament.

While Kurdistan has marketed itself to Western investors as "The Other Iraq," complaints of graft and human rights abuses has drawn support to Goran's change platform, especially among youths less loyal to tribal affiliations.

Such complaints have strengthened Goran, mainly with PUK defectors.

Campaigning in Kurdistan, mostly sheltered from the violence that has gripped Iraq since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster, was marred by reports of clashes between supporters of Talabani and Goran in Sulaimaniya, the Kurdish city that is a PUK stronghold.

"I do not think this election is fair and transparent, because security forces answer to the two large Kurdish parties," Mustafa said.