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SULAIMANIYAH,
Kurdistan-Iraq - Who will be Iraq’s
new prime minister?
“The Kurdish leadership expects to get one of the
two top jobs in Iraq,” said Hiwa Osman, a Kurdish
political analyst. “They’re not going to get the
prime minister’s post, so they will get the
presidency.”
There are two main Kurdish leaders in Iraq: Talabani,
who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, known as
PUK, and Massoud Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan
Democratic Party, known as KDP. Since 1991, each
party has controlled a section of the Kurdish
autonomous region in northern Iraq.
In Sunday’s national election, the Kurdish parties
fielded a unified slate of candidates, which is
expected to win the second highest number of seats
in parliament after the Shia slate. According to an
Iraqi official in Baghdad, preliminary results show
that the Shia coalition won 40 percent of the seats,
while the Kurds won 30 percent and Allawi’s secular
party captured about 15 percent.
As part of their deal to run for parliament on the
same slate, the two Kurdish leaders agreed that
Talabani would take any national post given to the
Kurds, while Barzani would become president of the
Kurdish autonomous region.
Kurdish officials say Barzani would help lobby for
Talabani to become president. But the two men
disagree on the choice of prime minister. Talabani
is said to favor Abdel-Mahdi, while Barzani supports
Allawi.
“Barzani is going to be the kingmaker,” a Kurdish
official said. “He’s probably the second most
powerful man in Iraq, after al-Sistani.”
Another Kurdish official said Talabani would be
willing to accept Allawi as prime minister as long
as Allawi dedicated himself to a major goal of the
Kurdish and Shia parties. Talabani and several Shia
leaders have said their main priority in the new
government will be to purge former Baathists who
have taken key positions in the nascent Iraqi
security forces.
To accomplish this goal, Shia and Kurdish parties
plan to take control of the interior and defense
ministries in the new government. They also plan to
pressure Allawi, an ex-Baathist who fell out with
Saddam’s regime in the 1970s.
Within the Shia coalition, the debate is over whom
to back against Allawi. In addition to Abdel-Mahdi,
there are three candidates:
Ibrahim Jaafari, leader of the religious Dawa Party
and a vice president in the interim government. He
is the second name on the al-Sistani-backed slate,
reflecting the influence of his political party,
which for two decades waged a guerrilla campaign
against Hussein’s government.
Hussain Shahristani, a nuclear scientist who was
imprisoned by the Baathist regime for years because
he refused to work on its weapons programs.
Shahristani is close to the grand ayatollah, who
asked him in November to lead a committee that drew
up the Shia slate and tried to unify the major Shia
parties.
Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shia and leader of the
Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of groups that
opposed Saddam’s regime from exile. Chalabi was once
favored by Pentagon officials to become Iraq’s new
leader, but he fell from the Bush administration’s
graces last year after about he reportedly passed
U.S. intelligence to Iran. Since then, Chalabi has
tried to remake himself as a Shia leader, but most
Iraqis regard him as a carpetbagger.
The main struggle within the Shia bloc is between
its two largest parties: the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which backs Abdel-Mahdi,
and the Dawa Party, which supports Jaafari.
The first major test of this Kurdish-Shia alliance
will be selection of a new prime minister.
“If the Shia bloc can come up with a unified
candidate, I expect that the Kurds would support
him,” Osman said. “If they cannot, then Allawi will
keep his job.”
http://www.qctimes.com
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