[Mb-civic] Top Shiites Nominate A Premier For Iraq - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Top Shiites Nominate A Premier For Iraq
Al-Maliki Opposed Hussein And the U.S.-Led Invasion

By Nelson Hernandez and K.I. Ibrahim
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 22, 2006; A01

BAGHDAD, April 21 -- Jawad al-Maliki, an experienced political operator 
and advocate for Iraq's Shiite Muslims, won the approval of Shiite party 
leaders for the post of prime minister on Friday, a day after the 
parties' original nominee bowed out under political pressure.

The move could end the political paralysis that has gripped Iraq since 
national elections were held on Dec. 15. Maliki, a senior member of the 
coalition of Shiite parties that holds the largest number of seats in 
Iraq's parliament, is now on course to lead Iraq's first long-term 
government since the fall of Saddam Hussein. If ultimately chosen, the 
former exile would inherit grave challenges, among them an economy in 
tatters, an insurgent movement that continues to attack Iraq's 
government and its U.S. backers, and ethnic and sectarian tensions that 
threaten to tear the country apart.

Leaders of the Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, said Friday 
night that Maliki's nomination by the alliance's political committee 
would face a vote by the full membership on Saturday morning. If 
approved, his name would be formally presented to Iraq's parliament, 
along with a list of nominees for other top posts, that afternoon.

But events rarely proceed so smoothly in the Iraqi political process, 
which has been held up for months by the debate over who would be prime 
minister. The incumbent, Ibrahim al-Jafari, won the alliance's 
nomination in February, only to be opposed by Sunni Arab and Kurdish 
political parties. Jafari, who like Maliki is a leader of the Dawa 
party, gave in to weeks of heavy pressure and surrendered his nomination 
on Thursday.

On Friday night, leaders of the Shiite alliance said they had gained 
support for Maliki from the leaders of the Sunni Arab and Kurdish 
political blocs. The Associated Press quoted Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of 
the main Sunni Arab coalition in parliament, as saying: "If anyone is 
nominated except al-Jafari, we won't put any obstacles in his way. He 
will receive our support."

The Shiite leaders also said they had reached an understanding with 
other factions over who would hold other top posts in the next 
government, including those of the president and two deputy presidents, 
who hold the formal power to nominate a prime minister. An aide to 
Jafari, Adnan Ali al-Kadhimi, said the Shiites had agreed to yield the 
presidential post to the incumbent, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. His two 
deputies, they said, would be Tariq al-Hashimi, a leader of the Sunni 
Arab coalition, and Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite economist who had been a 
rival to Jafari.

Maliki appears to hold a stronger mandate within the Shiite alliance 
than did Jafari, who was chosen over Abdul Mahdi in February by a single 
vote. Maliki's only remaining opponent among the Shiite parties is Nadim 
al-Jabiri, a candidate of the Fadhila Party, whose representative 
abstained from the political committee's vote on Maliki.

Party officials said Maliki won the support of the other six members of 
the alliance's political committee, including representatives of the 
alliance's most powerful factions -- the Dawa party; the Supreme Council 
for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which had supported Abdul Mahdi; and 
the group led by the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who had 
backed Jafari.

Maliki was "chosen for his acceptability both by groups inside the 
alliance and outside it," Ridha Jawad Taqi, a spokesman for the Supreme 
Council, said at a news conference broadcast on Iraqi television. "We 
want to have a government of national unity and partnership, a 
government that includes all components of Iraqi society, one that will 
be accepted by any ethnicity or group."

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the choice of Maliki 
was "a good step in the right direction. He's an Iraqi patriot. He's a 
strong leader."

Yet Maliki, born in 1950 near the Shiite holy city of Karbala, possesses 
credentials that may not endear him to Sunni Arabs or U.S. officials 
wary of foreign influence. He joined the Shiite-dominated Dawa party in 
1968, soon falling foul of Iraq's Baath Party government. He fled Iraq 
in 1980, a year after Hussein rose to the presidency, and spent his 
years in exile in Iran and Syria. He was sentenced to death in absentia, 
returning to Iraq only after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Hussein 
in 2003.

Although he was a strident opponent of Hussein, he also opposed the 
invasion that ultimately forced the ruler from power.

"The danger to Iraq lies in the possibility of the U.S. administration 
making mistakes in its supervision of this crisis," he said in an 
interview with the Lebanese newspaper al-Nahar in December 2002 that was 
translated by the U.S. government's Open Source Center. "Those who will 
rule Iraq after Saddam Hussein cannot be envied. Don't fight for ruling 
an Iraq full of widows and orphans and burdened with heavy debt."

After Hussein fell, Maliki and the Dawa party quickly claimed a powerful 
role in Iraqi politics. Like many Shiites, Maliki supported the removal 
of Baathists from the government. In 2004, he served as a mediator in 
talks between U.S. representatives and Sadr, a popular leader who led a 
Shiite uprising.

Maliki also served as deputy chairman of the committee that wrote the 
Iraqi constitution. He has argued against splitting Iraq along ethnic 
and sectarian lines -- a stance that could lead to conflict not only 
with the Kurds in the north, who have governed their own region for 
years, but with Shiite parties that favor establishing their own 
mini-state in the south.

Maliki will also have to deal with a shaken society in which the fear of 
violence has almost become routine. A U.S. Marine was killed in combat 
west of Baghdad on Friday, military authorities reported, and more than 
a dozen Iraqis were killed in bombings and shootings, according to 
police officials and news reports.

If Maliki is approved, he will have a month to form his cabinet. The 
interior, defense and oil ministries, responsible for the police, the 
army and the economy respectively, are likely to require the same 
painstaking negotiations that the choice of prime minister required.

"Of course there will be some difficult issues to deal with in the 
coming weeks, particularly the security ministers," Khalilzad said in a 
telephone interview. "But we had to have this. It's been a good day."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/21/AR2006042100385.html
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