Ibrahim Jaafari, leader of the Dawa religious party that has links to Iran, was on Tuesday poised to become Iraq’s next prime minister after winning the support of Shi’ite leaders.
The news came as Australia pledged another 450 troops to help stabilise Iraq after January elections that saw the rise to power of the long-oppressed Shi’ite majority and the fall of the Sunni minority that dominated under Saddam Hussein.
”The issue was decided unanimously by members of the United Iraqi Alliance list, and Mr Jaafari is its only candidate,” said Dawa spokesperson Jawad Maliki.
”The idea of a vote had been considered but it was no longer necessary when Ahmed Chalabi withdrew his candidacy at the last minute,” he added.
Chalabi, a maverick secular politician, was once a darling of the Pentagon but fell out of favour after allegations of corruption emerged against him.
Jaafari, currently one of two largely ceremonial vice-presidents, has been picked by the Shi’ite United Iraqi Alliance list, of which Dawa is one of the two main parties and which took 140 seats in the new, 275-seat National Assembly.
His Hezb al-Dawa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Call Party) quickly re-established itself in the southern Shi’ite heartland after the March 2003 United States-led invasion that ousted Saddam.
Dawa, the oldest Shi’ite party in Iraq, advocates Islamic reform and modernising religious institutions, while enjoying the prestige of its past resistance to Saddam’s regime.
Its members started carrying out attacks against Ba’ath officials in the 1970s and fully embarked on an armed struggle in the early 1980s, when Jaafari fled to Iran before moving to London in 1989.
Negotiations on the new government line-up are set to continue for several days, and perhaps weeks, but with the backing of the main list, Jaafari is likely to become the country’s new prime minister.
Violence threatens transition
Violence has continued to threaten the political transition since the elections, with dozens killed in relentless attacks by Sunni Arab extremists opposed to the democratic process.
On Tuesday, four people were killed and 30 police officers injured in a suicide attack against a convoy of police commandos in western Baghdad, the interior ministry and hospital sources said.
The bodies of two Iraqi soldiers were found near the restive Sunni city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, police said.
A car bomb targeting a US military convoy also went off in the restive northern city of Mosul, witnesses said. There were no immediate reports of any casualties.
Four US troops were killed in attacks on Monday.
Australia, one of Washington’s most faithful allies in Iraq, meanwhile announced that it will boost its number of troops from 950 to 1 400.
”The government believes that Iraq is very much at a tilting point and it’s very important that the opportunity of democracy, not only in Iraq, but also in other parts of the Middle East, be seized and consolidated,” Prime Minister John Howard told reporters.
Howard, who repeatedly pledged before Australia’s October election that he had no plans to increase the commitment, said circumstances have changed since then.
”I know it will be unpopular with many people,” he said, adding: ”I ask those people to take into account the reasons that I have given.”
Bush asks for support
Meanwhile, US President George Bush was in Europe trying to win more support for his policies in Iraq and elsewhere, in a bid to heal a damaging rift over the war to oust Saddam Hussein.
”Our strong friendship is essential to peace and prosperity across the globe — and no temporary debate, no passing disagreement of governments, no power on Earth will ever divide us,” Bush said on Monday in a landmark speech in Brussels.
”As past debates fade, and great duties become clear, let us begin a new era of transatlantic unity,” Bush told leaders of the European Union and Nato.
Nato chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Tuesday that all 26 alliance members are helping a Nato training mission in Iraq in some way.
Nato agreed to launch the training mission last year, but has struggled to mount the operation notably amid reluctance by countries opposed to the Iraq war to get involved on the ground. — Sapa-AFP