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BAGHDAD, Iraq, Early election returns indicating
that the Kurds could well be the power brokers in
forming a new government have emboldened their
leaders to press an ambitious agenda that could
define the political battlegrounds in the new Iraq.
If current election returns hold, the relatively
secular Kurds may prove a necessary coalition
partner, putting them be in a position to limit any
attempts by religious Shiites to install an Islamic
government. Kurdish leaders said Tuesday that they
were pushing for a Kurd to be president of Iraq.
They are also seeking guarantees that they can
maintain an autonomous region in the north, which
could in turn heighten tensions with neighboring
countries that are suspicious of any moves toward
Kurdish independence.
American officials have long considered the Kurds to
be their closest allies in Iraq, partly because the
Kurds, mostly Sunni Muslims, are generally less
religiously observant than Arabs here. As the
country moves toward a new government and
constitution, the Americans will likely find
themselves depending on the Kurds to act as a check
on conservative Islamic politicians.
The Kurds' confidence in their political muscle has
grown tremendously since Monday, when it became
apparent they are likely to have the second-largest
bloc in the 275-seat constitutional assembly, and
possibly the most cohesive and most courted.
Because forming a new government will require a
two-thirds vote, and because it seems unlikely the
main Shiite slate will get such a majority, the
Kurds may become an essential coalition partner.
The electoral commission announced Monday that the
main Kurdish coalition had 25 percent of the votes
tallied so far, behind the leading Shiite slate of
candidates but well ahead of other parties. About
4.6 million of an estimated 8 million votes have
been counted.
The probable ethnic and sectarian breakdown of the
votes still to be counted means the Kurds will
likely get at least one-fifth of the assembly seats.
One possibility is that the leading Shiite slate,
which has a strong Islamic component, could join the
Kurds to form a government.
Other groups, like the secular Shiite slate led by
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, which by Monday had
captured 13 percent of the votes, could court the
Kurds to form a bloc with enough veto power to head
off the Shiites.
That leaves the Kurds in a position to make
political demands.
"It's truly a different ball game, and it's new to
this part of the world," Barham Salih, the deputy
prime minister and a top Kurdish official, said in
his office inside the heavily fortified Green Zone.
"There will be a lot of bargaining, a lot of back
and forth, a lot of compromises."
Securing the post of president would give the Kurds
enormous power in appointing key members of the new
government, including the prime minister and
cabinet. It would also bolster the standing of Kurds
in the Middle East, where the governments of
neighboring Turkey, Syria and Iran are fearful of
any moves toward independence by Kurds in their own
countries.
Those governments will also watch closely what
autonomous powers the Kurds demand.
The Kurds have governed northern Iraq since the end
of the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, when the
Americans established a no-flight zone to protect
the north from incursions by Saddam Hussein's
military.
The ambitions of the Kurds will likely be opposed by
politicians seeking to install a Sunni Arab as
president in order to draw the Sunni Arabs, who once
ruled Iraq, into the political process, despite
their widespread boycott of the elections.
As the political jockeying intensified Tuesday,
violence continued.
A suicide bomber detonated his explosives outside a
recruiting station for Iraqi national guardsmen in
central Baghdad, killing at least 21 people and
wounding at least 27 more, according to American
military and Iraqi officials.
All those killed were men signing up for the
National Guard, a Defense Ministry official said.
Insurgents have killed at least 70 people in attacks
on Iraqi security forces since Sunday, signaling
that at least for now, the elections have done
little to damp the guerrilla war being led by Sunni
Arabs.
Armed men also killed two sons of Mithal al-Alusi, a
candidate in the elections and a former associate of
Ahmad Chalabi, the exile once favored by the
Pentagon to rule Iraq. The sons, in their 20's, were
gunned down Tuesday morning as they drove to a
Baghdad market, a family member said.
Mr. Alusi formed his own political party, the Iraqi
Nation Democrat Party, after he was ejected from Mr.
Chalabi's party for visiting Israel last fall.
In Najaf, the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, released a
rare statement saying the ayatollah was leaving the
writing of the permanent constitution to the
national assembly.
But the ayatollah believes the constitution "should
respect the Islamic cultural identity of the Iraqi
people," the statement said.
Leading Shiite clerics said in interviews over the
past week that they wanted Islam to be the guiding
principle of the new constitution.
Of all the political groups, the Kurds, who make up
one-fifth of the population, are the most organized,
and their coalition has a much better chance of
holding together in the national assembly than the
United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite religious slate
assembled by Ayatollah Sistani.
Mr. Salih, the deputy prime minister, said the
Kurdistan Alliance, the major Kurdish coalition, was
pushing Jalal Talabani for president. Mr. Talabani
is the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one
of the two main Kurdish parties in the north.
The other party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, has
agreed to back Mr. Talabani's candidacy for
president in exchange for the right of its leaders
to govern the Kurdish region.
"I think he will be good for the job," Mr. Salih
said of Mr. Talabani. "If he's ruled out because
he's an ethnic Kurd, that's a terrible signal."
The Iraqi president and two vice presidents,
collectively known as the presidency council, are to
be elected from the ranks of the national assembly
by a two-thirds vote. The council will then appoint
the prime minister and the cabinet. The assembly has
to approve a new government by a majority vote.
The assembly is charged with drafting the
constitution by mid-August, holding a nationwide
referendum on it within two months and preparing the
country for full-term elections by year's end.
The early election results announced Monday
indicated that the Shiite religious alliance had
just over 50 percent of the vote, and Dr. Allawi's
group 13 percent. Because of the widespread boycott
by the Sunni Arabs, about a fifth of the population,
the leading Sunni Arab party, led by Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar,
the interim president, had less than 1 percent of
the vote.
Kurdish leaders have expressed concern that Shiite
religious parties could push for an Islamic state
that would be heavily influenced by the clerics of
Najaf.
Faraj al-Haideri, a senior official in the Kurdistan
Democratic Party, said that whomever the Kurds
support must "believe in a federal, multi-ethnic,
democratic Iraq."
Other Kurdish officials echo the phrase. The key
word for the Kurds is federal. Their leaders insist
on the right to rule their region independently in
all matters except for those related to foreign and
monetary policy and national defense.
Mr. Salih said the Kurds also wanted to keep their
formidable militia, the pesh merga, as an intact
fighting force to guard the region. American
officials have tried hard to ban militias, but with
little success.
Kurdish leaders are also pushing for Kirkuk, a
oil-rich northern city, to be folded into
administration of the Kurdish region. Mr. Hussein
forced Kurds to move out of the city en masse and
resettled it with Arabs. Kurds are now moving back
in, driving some Arabs out and demanding that the
city be ruled by Kurds.
"We do not wait for anyone to give us our rights,"
Mr. Haideri said. "We take our rights."
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