Another 25 candidates were drawn from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an exile party based in Iran since the 1980s and a participant in the interim government.
Twenty candidates will come from another religious party, Dawa, which also takes part in the government; its leader, Ibrahim Jafari, is one of two interim vice presidents.
The slate includes candidates from the Iraqi National Congress led by Ahmed Chalabi, the onetime Pentagon favorite who fell from grace this year after allegations that he had spied for Iran.
Slots are also held for the Fadhila group loyal to Mohammed Yaacoubi, a cleric with a following in Basra; a group from Iraq's Turkish-speaking Turkmen minority; and a party representing Shiite Kurds.
Most Kurds are Sunnis, and the community's two main political parties have announced their intention to draft a separate slate that will probably command most of the votes in the Kurdish-dominated north.
Shahristani said the United Iraqi Alliance list will include independents from the northern city of Mosul, with its large Sunni Arab population, plus Sunni tribal representatives. Among them are the Shamar, one of the most powerful tribes in Iraq.
"We tried to include as many groups from various communities as possible," Shahristani said. "Everybody is happy with their share of the cake."
The Sunni vote remains the starkest question mark in Iraq. Sunnis benefited disproportionately under Hussein and since the invasion have accounted for most of the insurgents attacking U.S. and Iraqi security forces.
"These are not Sunnis," the country's interim president, Ghazi Yawar, said of the insurgents during a White House visit on Monday. "These are a mix of people who have one thing in common: hatred to the Iraqi society and hatred to democracy, people who are trying to stop us from having our first elections."
Yawar, a Shamar sheik, is also forming a political party. Like the United Iraqi Alliance, his group is cast as nationalist rather than factional in appeal.
But among Iraq's Shiite population, the election is widely viewed as a long overdue opportunity, especially given the hierarchical nature of Shiite society and Sistani's place at its apex.
"Whatever Sayyid Sistani says, I should obey his orders," said Jamal Mohammed, 46, using an honorific reserved for descendants of the prophet Muhammad. "Participation in voting is an act of Islamic unity in the face of the occupiers. We're fighting the occupation by going to the ballot box."
He spoke in a Shiite community center adorned with posters bidding "Your vote guarantees our security."
"If Sayyid Sistani says die, then we will die," said Hussein Murtadha, 40. "We know that his vision is better than our vision."
