BAGHDAD, 31 May 2004 — Two senior leaders were competing yesterday to become the first post-Saddam Hussein president of Iraq, as an interim government took shape and fresh violence broke out in the city of Najaf.
Iraqi politicians and US officials locked horns over whether Ghazi Al-Yawar, the chair of the Governing Council, or elder statesman Adnan Pachachi would take on the largely ceremonial post. “They want to impose someone on us. We won’t accept this. This is not the way to hand over sovereignty,” leading Kurdish member Mahmud Othman said, referring to US officials.
US overseer in Iraq, Paul Bremer, and UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi were said to prefer Pachachi, a moderate and former foreign minister during the 1960s. Othman accused the United Nations and the coalition of conniving at the expense of Iraqis, despite the fact that Brahimi was not at the meeting.
Coalition spokesman Dan Senor denied the coalition was interfering.
“We have not been ‘leaning on’ anybody to support one candidate for the presidency over another... We are not pressuring or engaging anyone, working them, to go one direction or another,” he told a news conference.
Governing Council spokesman Hamid Al-Kifaey said the body would postpone choosing between Yawar, a leader of one of the largest tribes in Iraq, and Pachachi until today. “We have equal respect for both people,” he said.
According to an Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, one of the two vice presidents would probably be Roj Nuri Shawis from the Kurdistan Democratic Party and a top lieutenant to Kurdish chieftain Massoud Barzani. The other was still undecided and was between Ibrahim Jaffari from the religious Shiite party Dawa, and Adel Abdel Mahdi from the rival Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Kifaey said he expected interim Defense Minister Ali Allawi to hold onto his portfolio, and Samir Al-Sumaiydah to stay on as interior minister.
A former exiled dissident and CIA-backed coup plotter, Iyad Allawi, cousin of the defense minister, has come under fire for his ties to Washington, a friendship which observers say is unlikely to endear him to the Iraqi masses.
Against the backdrop of political wrangling, at least two Iraqis were killed and five wounded when gunmen fired at a convoy of three sports-utility vehicles (SUVs) on a busy road in northwestern Baghdad, a police officer said.
Police Capt. Saadun Aziz later identified the dead man as an Iraqi and said the second individual killed was an Iraqi civilian whose car was driving close to the convoy.
It was not immediately clear if the man was an employee of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority or a private contractor, but SUVs are the vehicles of choice for coalition employees. The five or six survivors of the attack hijacked another car at gunpoint to escape, they said.
The five wounded included a pregnant woman and two children, Aziz said.
In central Iraq, a cease-fire between the militia of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr and US forces continued to look shaky as violence continued for the third day after a truce was announced Thursday.
The fighting lasted for about an hour and appeared to be coming from near the city’s vast cemetery and the 1920 Revolution Square.
— Additional input from agencies
