BAGHDAD, 29 May 2004 — Iyad Allawi, a former member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, was chosen as prime minister of Iraq yesterday.
Allawai, who worked with the CIA to topple Saddam, will be charged with taking over from the US occupation authority on June 30 and leading his country to its first free elections next year. His nomination emerged from a unanimous consensus at a meeting of the 25 US appointees on Iraq’s Governing Council.
United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, whom Washington asked to help shape a new Iraqi government, welcomed the choice of the British-educated Shiite neurologist through a spokesman.
Brahimi and Iraq’s US governor Paul Bremer endorsed the nomination, Governing Council member Mahmoud Othman said: “We had a meeting with Bremer and Brahimi and they both agreed and congratulated him and were happy about it,” Othman told reporters.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said only that he was waiting to hear from Brahimi and made no mention of Allawi, who survived an assassination bid by Iraqi agents in London in 1978.
From Iraq’s long-oppressed majority Shiite community, Allawi will be joined on the 30-member team by Sunnis, Kurds and representatives of Iraq’s other minorities.
Brahimi is expected to announce a Sunni president, two vice presidents and 26 Cabinet ministers over the next few days.
“Mr. Brahimi welcomes the decision to nominate Mr. Allawi,” said Brahimi’s spokesman Ahmad Fawzi, adding that the two would meet soon to discuss candidates for remaining government posts.
Negotiations are going on in the UN Security Council over how much sovereign power the interim government will have. Some Iraqi leaders and countries like France and Russia are pushing to amend a US-and British-sponsored resolution to strengthen the government’s powers, notably over US-led troops in Iraq.
The main challenge Allawi faces will be holding elections, due in January under the US proposal.
Five Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded in clashes between US troops and Shiite militia around Najaf, a day after militant cleric Moqtada Sadr offered a truce to end two months of fighting. But US officials, clearly keen to calm the situation before handing over sovereignty, played down the incidents and said they were still hopeful the cease-fire would hold.
Two Japanese journalists were killed in an attack on their car on Thursday at a well-known danger spot south of Baghdad, said doctors who displayed two incinerated bodies. A top Iraqi politician survived an attack in the same area on the same day.
— Additional input from agencies
