Iraq prepares for new government

By Aseel Kami

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi political leaders will meet the
president in his Kurdish homeland over the next few days to
prepare the ground for the formation of a new government, a
senior government official said on Tuesday.

The announcement, part of efforts ease sectarian and ethnic
friction following this month’s election, came as around 5,000
supporters of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi marched through
Baghdad in the latest protest against the results.

Sunni and secular parties are insisting the vote should be
rerun — at least in some key provinces where they say results
were fixed to favor the powerful Shi’ite Alliance which forms
the backbone of the interim government.

As political leaders prepared to talk to interim President
Jalal Talabani in separate, bilateral meetings at his power
base in the relatively peaceful Kurdish north, the violence
afflicting much of the rest of the country continued.

At least three Iraqis were killed and six wounded in
attacks in the northern oil city of Kirkuk and the town of
Mahaweel, 75 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad.

The U.S. military said four Americans died on Monday, two
of them in a helicopter crash in western Baghdad.

Police in the capital found three corpses bearing marks of
torture and bullet wounds, while in Sunni Arab bastion of
Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, gunmen abducted
the head of a pharmaceuticals factory and six of his
bodyguards.

Quelling such violence will be the main task of the
incoming government, expected to emerge over the coming weeks
or possibly months once the election results are finalized.

Though much of the recent bloodshed appears to be the work
of al Qaeda-linked Sunni Islamists dedicated to wrecking the
U.S.-backed political process, U.S. and Iraqi officials are
keen to stem any resurgence in violence by other Sunni Arab
groups, which observed an informal truce in the hope of
establishing a strong voice for their minority in the new
parliament.

Partial but near-complete tallies have disappointed many
Sunnis, showing the Shi’ite Islamist Alliance has done better
than expected, particularly in Baghdad, where it took 59
percent of the vote to just 19 for its nearest Sunni rivals and
14 percent for Allawi’s broad, non-sectarian secular coalition.

Accounting for nearly a quarter of the electorate and with
a broad ethnic and sectarian mix, Baghdad was the key prize in
a vote in which results were otherwise polarized along
predictable lines, with Shi’ites dominating the south, Kurds
the far north and Sunnis their heartlands west and north of the
capital.

Sunni politicians expressed outrage at the results. Some
warned that if their demand for a rerun was not met, the rebel
groups would lose patience and step up their attacks.

PRIVATE TALKS

Behind the scenes, however, Sunni politicians have
continued to talk to their rivals, and appear to be jockeying
for power more than trying to derail the process of forming a
new government.

U.S. diplomats are also closely involved in trying to find
a stable, consensus government that could stabilize the country
and allow Washington to start withdrawing its 160,000 troops.

Leading Sunni and secular politicians met Talabani in
Baghdad last week and, in public at least, spoke in
conciliatory terms about the importance of finding consensus
among all Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic groups.

This week’s talks will begin later on Tuesday when Abdul
Aziz al-Hakim, leader of one of the main Shi’ite Islamist
parties, meets Kurdish regional President Masoud Barzani,
according to Planning Minister Barham Saleh, a leading figure
in Talabani’s party.

Barzani shares leadership of the Kurdish bloc with
Talabani.

Talabani will then meet Hakim on Wednesday and plans to
meet secular and Sunni leaders later in the week, Saleh said.

Those leaders will include Allawi, a secular Shi’ite and
Adnan al-Dulaimi and Tariq al-Hashemi of the main Sunni
coalition, the Iraqi Accordance Front.

“The Kurdish Alliance is making contacts with the political
blocs to prepare for a national unity government,” Saleh said.

“These are preliminary and bilateral discussions between
the Kurds and other groups … There are expectation that at
the beginning of next year there will be bigger meetings.”

(Additional reporting by Mussab al-Khairalla and Mariam
Karouny)