BAGHDAD, 26 February 2005 — The United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition that won Iraq’s January election, has formed a team that has begun talks on putting together a broad government that represents all political camps, including Sunnis who largely boycotted the poll, a UIA member said yesterday. Ibrahim Bahr Al-Ulum said the United Iraqi Alliance, which won 140 of the 275 seats in the new National Assembly, would also work to ensure that the government not be formed on the basis of religious communities.

The UIA “formed a commission of nine members that yesterday (Thursday) began a series of discussions with the other winning lists in the election, including the Kurdish list, to reach agreements and decide on a date for the first meeting of the (new) National Assembly,” said Ulum, a former oil minister.

He said Ibrahim Jaafari, the UIA’s candidate for premier and head of the coalition’s constituent Dawa party, was a member of the commission. He added that the UIA had established a set of principles that would govern any alliance with other lists. “The first is that the next government should not be formed on a confessional basis,” Ulum said, referring to the practice up until now of dividing posts up among the country’s religious and ethnic groups.

“The second is that of the participation of all forces in the political process, including those who boycotted the elections or abstained and those who did participate but won no seats.”

Jaafari also held talks with the country’s top Shiite cleric yesterday on ways to include all parties in politics as negotiations on forming a new government looked set to drag on. “There is an important issue we discussed: the participation of our brothers who could not take part in the election,” Ibrahim Al-Jaafari told reporters after meeting Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani in the southern city of Najaf. “The next government requires consultation and consensus.”

Islamist Shiite Jaafari and other politicians are jockeying for the top positions in the next government after last month’s election, negotiations complicated by delicate ethnic and sectarian issues in a country plagued by violence. Minority Sunnis, who watched the majority Shiites replace them as the leading power after the polls, boycotted the election or did not vote due to fear of violence. The election result has raised concerns disaffected Sunnis will join insurgents waging a campaign of violence.

Shiite leaders have said Sunnis will play a role in Iraq’s new political landscape despite their election turnout. Whoever becomes prime minister is likely to make the country’s security crisis the top priority. Jaafari, a soft-spoken man who believes dialogue can ease Iraq’s many problems, was nominated to be prime minister by the United Iraqi Alliance, which won last month’s election.

The alliance will have a slim majority in the elected 275-seat National Assembly but must cut a deal to secure the two-thirds majority it needs to form a government.