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BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Shiite alliance won a slim
majority in Iraq's new National Assembly, according
to certified election returns announced Thursday,
but it may take weeks to form a government.
Meanwhile, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi
cautioned against excluding all Saddam Hussein's
supporters.
The key challenge for the new government will be
ending the insurgency that kills dozens of people
every week. On Friday, Indonesia's Foreign Ministry
said two reporters working for an Indonesian
television station went missing in Iraq on Wednesday
and that a witness said they were kidnapped by armed
men wearing Iraqi military uniforms.
Because a two-thirds majority in the 275-member
parliament is required for confirming the top
positions in the new government, the United Iraqi
Alliance will have to make deals with the other
parties. The alliance won 140 seats, while Kurdish
parties got 75, secular Shiites took 40 and nine
smaller parties shared 20, the final returns of the
Jan. 30 elections showed.
Shiite and Kurdish leaders have already agreed that
they must reach out to prominent Sunnis to
participate in the government if they want it to be
considered legitimate among Sunnis and to have any
hope of ending the country's largely Sunni-led
insurgency.
The Sunni-led Iraqis Party won only five seats in
parliament, because many Sunni Arabs avoided the
elections _ either out of fear of violence or to
support a boycott call by radical clerics opposed to
the U.S. military.
Allawi told The Associated Press that the alliance
must change its platform of purging Sunnis who were
members of Saddam's Baath Party from government
positions if it wants national unity.
"The alliance talks about de-Baathification. I hope
if they get control and they're chosen to be the
ones running the country, I sincerely hope that they
revisit these issues in their program and re-discuss
it with a view of having reconciliation and national
unity," Allawi said.
"We cannot afford in this country, for now, to go on
a route different to that of national unity," said
Allawi, who spoke English in the interview.
Otherwise, "it will throw the country into problems,
severe problems."
The violence, meanwhile, continued. Most Iraqis say
only negotiations will end the insurgents' attacks.
A U.S. soldier was killed and three others were
wounded in a car bomb attack while on patrol in the
northern city of Mosul, the military said Thursday.
In Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi
police killed two men with suspected links to al-Qaida's
affiliate in Iraq and arrested five others during
raids, the city's police chief, Major Gen. Adel
Molan, said Thursday.
"We found huge amounts of weapons, including
mortars, assault rifles, and explosives. We also
found computers and CDs which show the beheading of
several hostages in addition to letters which they
were about to send to Osama bin Laden," Molan said
of Tuesday's raids.
In the latest hostage ordeal, a Swedish citizen
kidnapped in Iraq appeared in a video with a gun
pointed at his head, appealing to the pope and
Sweden's king to help win his release from
insurgents, Swedish media reported. A group calling
itself "Martyr of al-Isawy Brigades" said it
kidnapped the Swede of Iraqi descent as he traveled
from Mosul to Baghdad this month.
The National Assembly will be in power for only 10
months, and its main job will be to draft a
constitution so new elections can be held in
December.
But it won't convene until disputes are resolved
over who will become prime minister _ the top post
in the new government.
Wrangling over who will become Allawi's successor
may take days or even weeks to resolve, several
people close to the talks said after the electoral
commission certified the results of the elections,
clearing the way for the country's first democratic
parliament in half a century.
The Kurdish parties have apparently agreed to
support the alliance's candidate for prime minister
in return for the largely ceremonial presidency,
though they have also offered to produce a
compromise candidate for prime minister, if needed.
Kurdish officials have said they would not accept a
theocratic government. |
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Ali Hashim al-Youshaa, one of the United Iraqi
Alliance's leaders, said the coalition has recruited
eight lawmakers from other political parties to join
the bloc in parliament, and that talks were under
way to recruit many more.
There is no timetable for convening the National
Assembly, and the current government will work with
incoming lawmakers to set a date to convene. Once
the assembly meets, there is also no deadline for
appointing the president and two vice presidents,
who will in turn name the prime minister.
Most observers don't expect the assembly to appoint
the president until there is consensus on who will
be prime minister and who will be in the Cabinet.
Once the president is appointed, a prime minister
must be named within two weeks.
The two leading candidates to be the alliance's
nominee for prime minister are interim Vice
President Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Iraqi National
Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi.
Allawi, whose secular party won 40 seats, insists he
is still in the running as a compromise candidate.
Al-Jaafari said Thursday he expects the alliance to
agree on a nominee within the next two days, but it
wasn't clear if he expected the candidate to have
the backing of the 182 lawmakers needed to win, or
the support only of the alliance.
"We are having free discussions about who is going
to be the prime minister and it probably will take
two or three days to announce who is going to be the
prime minister," al-Jaafari said following
certification of the election results.
Adnan al-Kadhimi, an aide to al-Jaafari, said he
expects the assembly to convene for the first time
March 1.
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