BAGHDAD » Ayad Allawi has seldom spoken publicly about the night more than 30 years ago when a pair of ax-wielding assassins turned his London bedroom into an abattoir.

Now, determined to counter charges by his political enemies that he won Iraq's national elections by appealing to Baathists and locked in a struggle with Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki to assemble a government, he offered up that story in the middle of an interview on Monday.

“;I was sleeping, you know, I just opened my eyes by sheer luck and saw a shadow by the bed,”; he said, describing the early morning hours of Feb. 4, 1978, when he was living in Kingston upon Thames as an exile and medical student after breaking with Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

Allawi said he kicked out at the man there just as he swung an ax, nearly severing Allawi's leg. A bloody struggle ensued, his wife jumping on one of the men's backs, Allawi wresting one of the axes away and attacking back, until the second attacker chopped at his head. His wife, Ettor, later died of her wounds. Allawi was so badly wounded that they left him for dead, though not before he yelled at them as they left, as he recalls it, “;You tell Saddam I am going to survive this, and I'll take your eyeballs out.”; He laughs nervously now at how brutal those words sound from long ago.

It is a story that seems designed to resonate with Iraqis who remain suspicious of a man who attracted a large percentage of the Sunni vote, and who needs to thwart the efforts of Shiite coalitions that threaten to combine to preclude him from again becoming prime minister. He and al-Maliki are each trying to assemble enough seats to win a majority in the 325-seat Parliament.

Allawi's attackers were never found; he said that Scotland Yard told him they were Iraqi intelligence agents. It took him a year and ten operations to recover from that 1978 attack, as well as another year of physical therapy. Later on there were a series of failed attempts by his exile political group, the Iraqi National Accord, working with the CIA, to overthrow Saddam.

Along the way, he became a rheumatologist, working as a specialist in spinal surgery during his exile in London. When the Americans occupied Iraq, he was appointed as the country's interim prime minister in 2004, but he then finished a distant third in Iraq's first national elections, in January 2005.

Allawi's surprising comeback has pitted him against al-Maliki, whom he defeated by a 91-89 plurality, even though the country's Accountability and Justice Commission - formerly known as the De-Baathification Commission - invalidated the candidacies of hundreds of his supporters, claiming they were former Baathists, and the government's antiterrorism forces arrested several of his candidates.

He confirmed that the commission was trying to invalidate ten more of his Iraqiya list parliamentary winners, which potentially could cut away his narrow plurality. The commission says that means their seats will be canceled, while Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission maintains Iraqiya will be able to replace those who are removed with others from their alliance. The matter seems likely to end up in court.

Hatred of Baathists among Shiite politicians runs deep, and suspicion of Sunni motives run equally deep; many Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the population, see Sunni support for Allawi as a disguised form of support for the old government.

“;They know this is not true,”; Allawi, 64, said. “;They know I fought Saddam and his regime for more than 30 years, more than anyone else in this government. They know I fought the Baathists, the idea of the Baathists.

“;Those who committed crimes should go to face justice, and the hundreds and millions of people who never committed crimes, they should be pardoned and should be part and parcel of the Iraqi society,”; he said.

It does not help either that some of his supporters have favorably compared him to Saddam, and that at his rallies enthusiasts could be heard chanting, “;We will sacrifice our blood and our souls for you, Allawi.”; That was the Saddam chant, first coined during the Iran-Iraq war.

Even some of his supporters admiringly repeat stories that show him as a strong man with some of the Saddam-like qualities many Iraqis seem to admire. While prime minister, they say, he personally shot several captured insurgents to death. “;I don't kill people,”; he said. “;It was all a fabrication.”; Then he added, “;I am tough on people who break the law, because I believe in the supremacy of law.”;

He also has a well-earned reputation as sometimes hardheaded and volatile; when he first visited the United States as prime minister, his forearm was bandaged and many said it was because he had angrily smashed his fist on his desk.

U.S. officials have carefully avoided expressing any preference for either Allawi or al-Maliki, but they had a friendly relationship with him during his tenure. “;Allawi demonstrated the ability to make and execute tough decisions in security and other matters,”; said Meghan O'Sullivan, then a U.S. occupation official who is a professor at Harvard.

Allawi was critical of the arrests of his followers by al-Maliki's government, particularly that of Najim al-Harbi, who was his Iraqiya list's top vote-getter in the mixed Shiite and Sunni province of Diyala. He is being held in an undisclosed location without access to a lawyer, Allawi said, on terrorism charges. “;The De-Baath Commission is working very hard, probably they will de-Baathify the 91 guys who won,”; he said, predicting that the commission would invalidate his candidates.

“;I can tell you with confidence if they have their way and start twisting things, I can assure you this country will be engulfed with violence and this violence will not remain inside of Iraq, it will spread,”; he said.

Whether he succeeds in forming a government or not, his family is not likely to join him in Iraq, he said. “;I have my children and my wife in London because they can't come here,”; he said. He remarried after his first wife died. “;What schools could they go to here? The children of Ayad Allawi, what would they do to them? They would kill them.”;

His conversation returned again to that night in Kingston upon Thames. “;When I fought these guys who tried to kill me and then when I fought against Saddam, I had a very tough time,”; he said, “;but I'm not frightened easily.”;