Former Baathist to be premier: US accused of violating Najaf truce
BAGHDAD, May 28: Iraq's Governing Council on Friday chose Iyad Allawi, a former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party who later worked with the CIA to topple him
, as prime minister in the interim government slated to take over from the occupation authority on June 30.
The nomination was announced after a meeting of the 25 US appointees on the council. Meanwhile, clashes between US troops and an Iraqi militia around Najaf left five civilians dead, a day after Shia leader Moqtada al Sadr offered a truce to end two months of fighting.
Two Japanese journalists were killed in an attack on their car on Thursday at a well-known danger spot south of Baghdad, said doctors who displayed two incinerated bodies. A top Iraqi politician survived an attack in the same area on the same day.
Sadr's supporters accused the Americans of a breach of faith in setting up roadblocks that forced their leader to lie low and miss his Friday sermon at Kufa, just outside Najaf. Aides said Moqtada Sadr had stayed away for fear of being captured.
Ending the resistance in Najaf and Kufa has been a concern for Washington as it prepares to hand over to an interim government in Baghdad next month. An official at a hospital in Kufa said three people had died in gunfire and mortar shelling in the town, while eight were wounded. In Najaf, two were killed and six were hurt, hospital staff said.
Thousands of Moqtada Sadr's followers, some of them armed, skirted US tanks blocking roads into Kufa and crowded into and around the mosque where Sadr normally preaches a keynote Friday sermon full of invective against the American occupation of Iraq.
"They're trying to arrest Sayyed Sadr and to prevent Friday prayers. They are not respecting the truce," said one worshipper, Abbas al Mayahi. "They want to get rid of the only voice that calls for armed resistance against the Americans."
People chanted: "The sayyed has shaken America," using a term of respect for Moqtada Sadr's distinguished lineage. One of Sadr's followers spoke in his place and the crowds dispersed.
In Najaf, when Sadreddin al Kabanji, a critic of Sadr who supports Iraq's senior ayatollah, Ali al Sistani, left the Imam Ali mosque after prayers, unidentified men opened fire. No one was injured in the incident, however.
US troops had suspended offensive operations after Shia elders persuaded Moqtada Sadr to offer a truce as a first step to ending the uprising which has cost hundreds of lives. But the military refused to drop demands for Sadr's arrest on a murder charge, and said they would fire in self-defence. A deal with Moqtada Sadr could stanch a major source of trouble for US troops before the handover of power on June 30.
Two US soldiers were also wounded in the clashes after their Humvee military vehicle came under fire from fighters in Kufa, a military spokeswoman said.
NEW PM: United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is expected to announce a 30-person government team for Iraq in the next few days, and Paul Bremer, the chief of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), endorsed the IGC's choice of Iyad Allawi as prime minister.
It was unclear how far US officials or Mr Brahimi influenced the choice of a long-time exile known to few Iraqis and whom people in Baghdad said was an outsider they could not trust.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said only that he was waiting to hear from Mr Brahimi and made no mention of Mr Allawi, who survived an assassination bid by Iraqi agents in London in 1978.
"I know nothing about him. He lived abroad as an exile. We need someone who lived here who can pull Iraq out of a crisis," said a Baghdad hotel manager, complaining of daily violence. "Iraq is the same as it was in the time of Saddam Hussein except now I am afraid of militiamen so I can't say my name."
Mr Allawi, a British-educated neurologist, is a former member of the Baath Party and a relative of Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favourite who has fallen out with Washington. The main challenge Mr Allawi faces will be holding elections, due in January under the US proposal. -Reuters
