The Shia list which won Iraq’s elections agreed on Tuesday on Vice President Ibrahim Jaafari as its candidate for the premiership, as parties continued to haggle over the makeup of the next executive.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a physician and father of five, is head of the Dawa Party, one of two leading religious parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia-led group which won 48 per cent of the vote in elections on January 30.
"The competition is still fierce but it appears so far that Jaafari will be the United Iraqi Alliance candidate because Dawa is insisting on him," a senior Shia source told Reuters. The diplomatic and softly-spoken 58-year-old, who holds the largely ceremonial role of the vice president in the current interim government, fled Iraq in 1980 after thousands of Dawa members were murdered by Saddam Hussein.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari seems all but certain to win the approval of the Shia political alliance. However, Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favourite, was still in the running. In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Al-Jaafari said if he is confirmed as prime minister, he would first try to stymie the violence that has crippled the country’s recovery from decades of war and hardship.
"The security situation is at the top, as it is a pressing element," al-Jaafari said. He also said he would not push for the US and its allies to withdraw their troops from Iraq any time soon. "Blood is being spilled and the land is under attack," he said. "How about if we decided to get these troops out of Iraq?" he added, implying that the situation would be much worse than it is now.
His family remains in London. While the alliance did not win the 60 per cent it hoped for, the vote puts the coalition in a commanding position to take the top job in the next government. A two-thirds majority is needed in the newly elected National Assembly to form a government. Shias have gained unprecedented power while minority Sunnis have been marginalised after boycotting the polls due to fears of violence.
Shia leaders have said the Sunnis would play a role in postwar Iraqi politics. "There are two main things that must happen to ensure the continuity of the political process. First, there should be a clear vision and insistence that all Iraqi factions take part in the political process with deeds, not only words," said Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
"Second is to have a dialogue, a real one, for writing the constitution. If we manage to make this balance then this is the fruit we will get from the elections," he told Reuters in an interview at his headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday.
The Shia alliance, formed with the backing of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is headed by Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), both of which opposed Saddam Hussein from exile in Iran. The source said SCIRI, led by Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, had agreed to support Jaafari and withdraw its candidate, Finance Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi.
The Kurds’ powerful showing puts them in a kingmaker role. They want Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to be Iraq’s president and are likely to support the Shia choice for prime minister if they get their way.
If Jaafari were to become prime minister, he is likely to bring a much more Islamic approach to the job after six months under the secular leadership of Allawi. Meanwhile, a school in Baghdad was hit by a mortar round, but there were no casualties. The US raids netted 53 suspected insurgents across Iraq on Tuesday. Two Iraqi policemen were killed and another two wounded when a bomb exploded near a highway in the western part of Baghdad.
Elsewhere in the capital, a bomb exploded along a highway in the western Baghdad neighbourhood of Ghazaliya, killing one civilian and seriously wounding a policeman, a police officer said on condition of anonymity. Kidnappers released Kahraman Sadikoglu, president of the Istanbul-based Tuzla Shipyard, late on Monday, a Foreign Ministry official said.
Near Baqouba, the deputy governor of a volatile province north of Baghdad escaped an apparent assassination attempt on Tuesday after a suicide bomber rammed his car into his government convoy, police said. The bomber died, but no other casualties were reported in the insurgent attack in Khalis, 80-km north of the Iraqi capital, said police Lt Ali Hussein. A roadside bomb detonated in Baqouba, 55-km northeast of Baghdad when a National Guard convoy passed by, killing three troops, Mudafar Al-Juburi from the Dyala police station said. |
