KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) -- Sworn into office after January's historic elections in Iraq, the new members of the local provincial council were expected to usher the ethnically mixed northern city of Kirkuk into a new era of political cooperation.

Instead, they became bogged down in bitter accusations of fraud and power grabbing. A boycott by angry Arab and Turkomen members against their Kurdish colleagues ensured that a full council did not meet until early August.

The seven-month delay has laid bare the deep-seated divide between rival ethnic groups, whose long-standing grievances and open mistrust have erupted into a near-paralyzing impasse.

In many ways, the provincial council's troubles seem reflective of the larger difficulties facing Iraqi leaders in cobbling together a new government as they try to avoid the real possibility of an ethnic conflict that could lead to a civil war.

"It's been very, very frustrating," said Lt. Col. Anthony Wickham, who heads a team of U.S. military advisers to the Tamim provincial council.

"If you can solve the problems here, you can do it anywhere because you have all the complications of getting this country together. It's all right here - a microcosm of Iraq."

The current problems besetting Kirkuk have roots in competing claims by different ethnic groups over who has dominance over the oil-rich city, 180 miles north of Baghdad. The Kurds and the Turkomen both say the city was historically theirs.

The centuries-old city, with its motley mix of Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen and Assyrians, lies directly at the center of the ethnic "fault line." To the west is the Sunni Arab-dominated town of Hawija, while to the east is the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.

During Saddam Hussein's era, the Baath Party forcibly evicted tens of thousands of Kurds and Turkomen from the Kirkuk area, confiscating their property and replacing them with Arabs in a campaign known as Arabization.

Since the Iraqi leader's ouster in April 2003, thousands of Kurds have returned home, with many living in refugee camps as they wait for their property claims to be processed. But many Arabs, who have been living in the city for several decades, have resisted their own removal.

Tensions have been exacerbated since the Kurds won a solid majority of Kirkuk's provincial council seats - 26 of 41 - in January's elections. Turkomen won nine seats while the Arabs ended up with only six.

Similar results for nationwide elections left the Sunni Arabs largely without a representative political voice in the country - a result that Americans fear has only fueled the insurgency, which has been supported by the minority Sunni community.

Arab councilman Sheik Abdulla Sami al-Assi acknowledged that low voter turnout among Sunni Arabs contributed to the problem. But al-Assi, along with his Turkomen colleagues, also accused the Kurds of voter fraud, saying many of the Kurdish returnees to the area voted illegally.

The current council "doesn't represent all the voices, especially the Arabs," al-Assi said.

Council chairman Rizgar Ali Hamajan, a member of the Kurd-dominated Brotherhood List that swept the elections and nearly all the top posts in the provincial government, said it boiled down to a matter of participation.

"It's not our fault. Not one Kurd went to Hawija and told Arabs not to vote. Whatever we do with the Arabs, they complain," Hamajan said.

Wickham noted the initial momentum after the elections led to talks on a power-sharing deal, but negotiations quickly broke down in the wake of a series of incidents he characterizes as "comic opera."

First came the infamous "furniture debacle," as the Americans have dubbed it. After the elections, the committee put in charge of reassigning rooms and furniture at the government building was made up of Kurds, he said. When the choice rooms were doled out, a letter from the chairman said a majority of the committee had made the assignments.

Already suspicious over election results, the Arab and Turkomen members charged the Kurds with trying to take control of the council and began a boycott that lasted until early August.

The Brotherhood list had its own share of problems, with members unable to decide among themselves who should become the new governor, resulting in more delays.

Wickham met with council members on a near-daily basis, pushing them to resolve their differences. They finally agreed to come back to the table in early August after negotiations brokered by the U.S. State Department reallocated control of several key provincial posts to Arabs and Turkomen and guaranteed more equal representation on the Kirkuk city council.

"They are still making painfully slow, but steady progress," Wickham said.

The provincial council's difficulties reflect the ethnic and religious tensions nationwide as Iraq faces a constitutional referendum in October and a general election two months later.

Councilman al-Assi said the Arab community is "very serious about participating in the next elections," adding they are undeterred by threats made by terrorist group al-Qaida in Iraq to target Sunnis who vote.

"This next election is very important. It will decide the fate of Arabs citizens. If the next elections are clean, I believe Arabs will have a big role in the government," he said.

By Tini Tran