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Iraq prepares for new government

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 December 2005, 12:15 CST

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)

Source: REUTERS

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