Incumbent Al-Jaafari to Stay Iraqi Prime Minister

By Rick Jervis

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s leading Shiite coalition on Sunday nominated incumbent Ibrahim al-Jaafari to remain as Iraq’s prime minister.

Critics of al-Jaafari say he has not been assertive enough during a time of political instability and violence. But al-Jaafari adviser Basam Ridha said the prime minister has led the country through troubling times during which voters approved a new constitution and elected a parliament.

“Iraq has become a battlefield,” Ridha said. Al-Jaafari “will not be able to make an overnight success of Iraq, but he has a vision.”

Al-Jaafari has critical challenges ahead. One is creating a new government that will include minority Sunnis, who are behind much of Iraq’s insurgency.

“Today’s victory is not that this one won or that one won,” al-Jaafari said after the vote. “It’s the victory of the alliance with its unity and cool head.”

Al-Jaafari did not have unanimous backing from the Shiite alliance. He beat Adel Abdul Mahdi, one of Iraq’s two vice presidents, by 64 to 63 in a vote among leaders of the country’s largest Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance. Three legislators abstained.

The Shiite leaders voted after weeks of heated negotiations failed to yield a consensus candidate.

Supporters of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has led violent uprisings against U.S. forces, threw their support behind al-Jaafari. “We see in Ibrahim al-Jaafari a man who is efficient and able to contain problems,” Bahaa al-Aaraji, a senior al-Sadr official, told the Associated Press. “We have talked to him and spoken about the mistakes of the last government in total honesty.”

The Shiite alliance, which led the December elections, holds 130 of 275 seats in the National Assembly. The constitution says the bloc with the most seats in the assembly appoints the prime minister, who will serve a four-year term.

Al-Jaafari’s tough-talking predecessor, Ayad Allawi, was more assertive in office than al-Jaafari, 59, who favors long speeches and flowery language.

“Al-Jaafari didn’t do much,” said Hatem Mukhlis, a political organizer for an opposition group. “He failed to show he was a leader, to bring everyone together.”

It’s not clear yet what impact the choice of al-Jaafari will have on the push to bring factions together, a key aim of U.S. strategy in Iraq.

Soon after the Shiite alliance vote Sunday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, head of the Kurdish coalition, said the Kurds would not support a government that doesn’t include Allawi’s secular Iraqi National List.

The Kurdish parties are coalition partners with the Shiites in the current government.

A key issue al-Jaafari faced recently is criticism from Sunnis that the Shiite-dominated security services were targeting and abusing Sunnis. Detainees showing signs of abuse were discovered in two detention centers run by the government’s Interior Ministry.

Al-Jaafari was criticized for not doing enough to stop the alleged abuse, though he was not connected directly to the security forces responsible for it, said Mahmoud Othman, a leading Kurdish lawmaker.

“He’s had many problems in the past,” Othman said. “But al-Jaafari at least wasn’t tied to the (anti-Sunni) militias.”

Al-Jaafari could have taken stronger action in office but was often blocked from making tough decisions, such as firing ministers, for fear of disrupting fragile alliances, Ridha said.

Born in the Shiite shrine town of Karbala, al-Jaafari joined Dawa, Iraq’s oldest Shiite party, in the 1960s. He fled to Iran in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein’s regime cracked down on Dawa. He later moved from Tehran to London, opposing Saddam the whole time, and gained recognition among Iraq’s exiles. With his family in London, al-Jaafari returned to Iraq in 2003 and served on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council.

(c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.