The United States was on Sunday night locked in a dispute with Iraqi leaders over who should be the country’s president when power is handed over on June 30.
The US governor of Iraq, Paul Bremer, and the UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, insisted the job should go to Adnan Pachachi, an 81-year-old former foreign minister. But the Iraqi governing council demanded that the largely ceremonial post should go to Sheikh Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawar, an Arab businessman in his 40s who has criticised the US-led occupation and who is the council’s president.
The row threatens to delay the appointment of a new interim government. A ceremony scheduled for Monday appeared on Sunday night to have been postponed.
On Friday the governing council voted unanimously to endorse Ayad Allawi, a British-educated neurosurgeon with close links to the CIA, as the new prime minister — a move that seems to have caught Brahimi by surprise.
At a stormy governing council meeting yesterday, Bremer bluntly warned members not to hold another vote on who should be the new president. If they did he would ignore it.
”The behaviour of Mr Bremer and Mr Brahimi has been shameful,” Mahmoud Othman, a leading council member told The Guardian. ”It’s like being in a dictatorship again. Adnan follows the Americans around like a puppy. If the Americans told Adnan that yoghurt was black, he would go along with it.”
On Sunday the coalition’s spokesman, Dan Senor, denied that the US favoured Pachachi. ”We are not urging any one candidate,” he said.
Bremer’s tough stance in support of Pachachi, a former exile who served as Iraq’s foreign minister before the Ba’ath party seized power in 1968, was unexpected. The Americans had previously indicated that they were primarily interested in approving the choice for prime minister.
The governing council is due to meet again today, amid rumours that a mystery third candidate could emerge.
Council members admitted that the row was the main stumbling block to an agreement on the entire cabinet, due to be unveiled this week, which will hold power until Iraqi elections next January.
The bickering has done little to help the new government’s credibility. ”The people were never involved in the political process for 35 years. So what’s new,” Kareem Mahmoud, a Baghdad street vendor said.
Sheikh Ghazi took over as head of the governing council earlier this month after the assassination of his predecessor, Izzedin Salim.
Both he and Pachachi are Sunni Arabs. But while Pachachi wears western suits, Sheikh Ghazi dresses in traditional Arab robes and headgear.
On Sunday a source close to Sheikh Ghazi said Bremer and Brahimi asked him to step down in favour of Pachachi. He was apparently offered the post of cabinet spokesperson or ambassador in Washington. The sheikh told them to seek the governing council’s opinion.
In a recent television interview, he blamed the United States for Iraq’s problems. ”They occupied the country, disbanded the security agencies and for 10 months left Iraq’s borders open for anyone to come in without a visa or passport.”
Pachachi fled to the United Arab Emirates after the Ba’ath party seized power. He is well connected with the US, and pro-US states in the Gulf.
On Sunday night senior Iraqi politicians admitted that despite Brahimi’s promise to bring in ”non-political” faces and technocrats, the new Iraqi government looked suspiciously like the old one. ”The difference this time is that it does have powers and will have international recognition,” Othman admitted.
”Until there are elections, no government can really lay claim to credibility.”
Masked gunmen ambushed a convoy of armoured vehicles carrying western civilians in north-west Baghdad on Sunday night, killing at least four Iraqis and abducting three westerners, police said.
A Guardian translator who arrived on the scene soon after the incident said locals were dancing around two burning four-wheel-drive vehicles, chanting ”victory to the Arabs”. Police said up to eight men in Arab dress had fired on the convoy from a bridge. – Guardian Unlimited Â