BAGHDAD, 30 May 2004 — Iyad Allawi, named to become the first prime minister in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, reviewed a possible government line-up yesterday, while dissent emerged among the dominant Shiites amid a fragile truce between a radical cleric and US forces.
A number of fighters loyal to Moqtada Sadr were killed in a second day of clashes with US troops in the central city of Kufa, the American military said.
Unrest also rocked the ethnically tense northern city of Kirkuk, where a Kurdish official and his family were killed in a drive-by shooting. Iraq’s daily diet of attacks will prove a stiff test for US-backed former exile Allawi, a secular Shiite and former intelligence officer, whom the Governing Council nominated Friday to steer the troubled country to elections in January.
The scion of a wealthy political family, Allawi is not the seasoned technocrat that UN and coalition officials had earmarked to lead the country to its first elections since the US-led invasion.
UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is overseeing the selection of the interim executive set to assume sovereignty from the US-led coalition on June 30, had been expected to make a formal announcement to the Security Council next month.
An Iraqi official said US overseer Paul Bremer presented a fait accompli to Brahimi by pressing interim Governing Council members to make a quick decision.
“On Thursday, Bremer informed the council members that they had to agree on the name of the prime minister by Friday at the latest,” said the official involved in the nomination process.
“Because the Americans were in such a hurry, Brahimi was not able to inform the (Security) Council of the result of his consultations,” the official said.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the surprise changes in the nomination process could also see the senior US-backed Sunni official Adnan Pachachi take the post of president that seemed promised to current Governing Council head Ghazi Al-Yawar.
A leading Kurdish member of the Governing Council, Mahmud Othman, said the line-up of the new government would be decided by Sunday at the latest.
The 58-year-old Allawi returned last April from years in exile, after failing to carry out a US Central Intelligence Agency-backed coup against his archrival Saddam Hussein in 1996.
While ordinary Iraqis may see him as a US puppet, Allawi was chosen chiefly for his security background and was seen as the best candidate to restore calm.
— Additional input from agencies
