Iraqis Chafe at U.S. Block on Choice of President

Mon May 31, 2004 10:42 AM ET

By Tom Perry

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) -

Iraqi leaders were dismayed that the United States and United Nations Monday were blocking their choice of a president to succeed Saddam Hussein when the U.S. occupation authority is wound up in a month's time.

Deadlock set in Sunday after a prime minister and key cabinet posts were broadly agreed to, prompting U.S. officials to ask the Iraqi Governing Council to put off until Tuesday further talks on filling the largely ceremonial post of head of state.

The U.S.-appointed Council favors its present leader, Ghazi Yawar, a prominent tribal leader with support from various ethnic and religious groups. Council members said U.S. governor Paul Bremer and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi were pressuring them to back Adnan Pachachi, an 81-year-old former foreign minister.

"There's quite a lot of interference. They should let the Iraqis decide for themselves. This is an Iraqi affair," Mahmoud Othman, a Kurd on the 22-member Council, told Reuters.

"We were hoping that this government would have some legitimacy," said Jawad al-Boulani, an aide to religious Shi'ite Council member Abdulkarim al-Muhammadawi. "But if the government is formed in this way the Iraqi people will reject it."

Several Iraqis said they believed U.S. officials may try to break the deadlock by suggesting a compromise third candidate.

Violence poses the greatest challenge to the new interim government's prime task of holding Iraq's first free elections in the new year. Two U.S. soldiers and close to 20 Shi'imilitiamen were killed in sharp skirmishing near Najaf, the fourth day of clashes since the militia leader offered a truce.

A speeding car bomb killed at least two people on a busy Baghdad street not far from the new prime minister-designate's office. Dutch troops were close by when a van exploded in the southern city of Samawa and a mortar attack struck the offices of a Kurdish political party at Arbil, in the north of Iraq.

US-APPOINTED COUNCIL FLEXES MUSCLE

U.S. and U.N. officials have declined comment on the process of agreeing the government and presidency beyond saying that it is a broad consultative process not confined to the Governing Council. The body was appointed by the U.S. occupying power a year ago and is regarded by many Iraqis with suspicion.

The Governing Council caught Brahimi off-guard Friday by announcing the nomination to the top job of prime minister of Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'i member of the Council who worked with the CIA from exile to overthrow Saddam. Brahimi and the White House later said they endorsed the appointment.

Despite Brahimi's suggestion some weeks ago that he would prefer to see an interim government of apolitical technocrats, the Council appears set on naming many of its own members to the new administration that will supersede it role on June 30.

Both Yawar and Pachachi are Sunni Muslim Council members.

Yawar is a civil engineer from the northern city of Mosul and a tribal chief who generally appears in traditional Arab robes and headdress. In his mid-40s, he enjoys support from the non-Arab Kurds and among the Shi'i Muslim majority and worked for many years running a telecoms company in Saudi Arabia.

An elegant figure in Western business suits, Pachachi is the scion of a Baghdad political dynasty from the days before Saddam. He was foreign minister and ambassador to the United Nations in the 1960s and has spent three decades in Abu Dhabi.

One Iraqi politician said the Council felt Yawar could rally Iraq's disparate communities; Pachachi, many felt, represented a strain of the old-style pan-Arab nationalism also embraced by Saddam. Some also thought he did too little to oppose Saddam.

It was unclear why Washington was objecting to Yawar. He has criticized the U.S.-drafted U.N. resolution that sets out the handover plan, complaining it gives Iraqis too little control of the 150,000 mainly American foreign soldiers staying in Iraq.

NAJAF BATTLE

U.S. military spokesmen said two soldiers were killed by Shi'i militia at Kufa, just outside Najaf, late Sunday and that U.S. troops killed close to 20 guerrillas in response.

young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared a cease-fire in Najaf Thursday, after pressure from the Shi'i religious and political establishment who are exasperated by two months of bloodshed between U.S. forces and Sadr's Mehdi Army.

U.S. commanders welcomed Sadr's offer to pull his forces off the streets but maintained their demands that he turn himself in on a murder charge and fully disband his militia.

The U.S. military said one 1st Armored Division was killed in an ambush and another when a grenade struck his tank.

The deaths of two others soldiers were announced Monday, bringing the total U.S. combat death toll in Iraq to 592.

U.S. tanks advanced into Kufa toward the main mosque and skirmished with Mehdi Army fighters based around it for about two hours around midnight, residents said.

U.S. commanders have said, however, they would be willing to wait several days to assess whether the cease-fire was holding.

Shi'i leaders who had negotiated with Sadr said in Kufa on Sunday they were still optimistic.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Kufa)

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03.

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.

editor@aljazeerah.info