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Wednesday: Top Shiite and Kurdish political leaders
finished two days of meetings in their efforts to
form a new government following the national
elections on Jan. 30.
Adnan Ali, a deputy head of the Dawa Islamic Party,
the Shiite group that has offered up Ibrahim al-Jaafari
as prime minister, said in an interview that an
announcement could be made in as soon as 10 days.
Safeen Dizayee, a spokesman for the Kurdistan
Democratic Party, did not offer an estimate, but
said it would not take a few months to form the
government, as some predict.
Dr. Jaafari is a member of the Shiite political
alliance assembled by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq. The alliance
won a slim majority of constitutional assembly seats
in the elections, but still needs a two-thirds
assembly vote to form a government. The Kurds won
more than a quarter of the seats, so together the
groups could form a government.
Dr. Jaafari's trip to the north signaled the start,
or the acceleration, of heavy negotiations with the
Kurdish leaders. His main rival is Ayad Allawi, the
interim prime minister and an avowed secularist.
Dr. Jaafari met on Tuesday with Massoud Barzani, the
leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and on
Wednesday met with Jalal Talabani, the head of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdish nominee
for president.
Mr. Ali said, "This shows that we can reach an
agreement very soon." He added that the Kurdish
leaders and Dr. Jaafari had agreed to separate the
issue of the formation of the government from
"strategic demands" that should be discussed in the
new assembly. Those demands, Mr. Ali said, involve
the heated questions of where to draw the boundary
of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, and
whether the Kurds should be allowed to administer
the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk.
The Kurds appeared to have softened their stand on
having Mr. Talabani as president. Mr. Dizayee said
the Kurds might be satisfied with any of the top
three posts in the government - president, prime
minister or head of parliament.
Mr. Ali said "other groups" would have to be
consulted before the Kurds could be given the
presidency. He was alluding to parties representing
Sunni Arabs, who make up a fifth of the population
but largely boycotted the elections.
"The overall feeling is engagement of all parties,"
Mr. Dizayee said.
Many predict that if the Sunni Arabs continue to
feel disenfranchised, the insurgency will worsen.
One indication of the insurgency's strength was the
assassination Tuesday of Judge Parwiz Muhammad
Mahmoud al-Merani and his son, Aryan Mahmoud al-Merani,
a lawyer, who both worked at the special tribunal
that will try Saddam Hussein and other members of
his government. It was the first known case of a
tribunal member being killed.
At a funeral ceremony on Wednesday at a Baghdad
mosque, Judge Mahmoud's two remaining children said
they believed the two men had been killed because of
their roles on the tribunal, dismissing reports of a
personal motive for the killings. Judge Mahmoud, 59,
was also a high-ranking member of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan and had been imprisoned and
tortured as a young man by Mr. Hussein's government.
"He knew it was a dangerous job, he knew he might
get killed," said Mariwan Mahmoud al-Merwani, the
judge's remaining son.
The two tribunal officials were killed outside their
Baghdad home by gunmen who drove up and fired
automatic weapons. Members of the tribunal are
provided with security guards, but it was not clear
whether any guards were present. A spokesman for the
tribunal declined to comment on the killings, saying
a statement would be issued later.
www.nytimes.com
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