WASHINGTON, March 31: Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari on Thursday warned against US interference in his country’s politics and defended his ties to a radical Shia militia.
With backing from Shia parties, Mr Jaafari is seeking to stay in office but his candidacy has proved contentious among parliamentary factions, which have yet to agree on a national unity government three months after national elections.
In an interview published by The New York Times, Mr Jaafari said certain comments from US officials had undermined President George Bush’s public stance in favour of democracy in Iraq.
“There was a stand from both the American government and President Bush to promote a democratic policy and protect its interests,” he told the paper in the interview, conducted at his Baghdad home.
“But now there’s concern among the Iraqi people that the democratic process is being threatened.” Mr Jaafari appeared to be referring to US concerns over his candidacy amid reports that US officials were actively lobbying for other figures who might be able to draw support from Kurdish and Sunni leaders who oppose Mr Jaafari.
“The source of this is that some American figures have made statements that interfere with the results of the democratic process,” he said, without elaborating. “These reservations began when the biggest bloc in parliament chose its candidate for prime minister.”
Three months after the national elections, Iraqi efforts to form a government have been delayed by bickering over cabinet posts and resistance to Mr Jaafari’s drive to keep his job.
Mr Jaafari’s comments came a day after the White House denied reports from Iraq that Mr Bush had told a top Shia leader that he opposed Mr Jaafari as the country’s next prime minister.
“I don’t think we’ve made any such statements,” deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.
“The future of Iraq and the development of its political institutions is in the hands of Iraqis.
“We are a friend of Iraq. We are there to support them in that endeavour and to assist them in that process as we can,” Mr Ereli said.
Kurdish and Sunni representatives accuse Mr Jaafari of running a sectarian-tinged government and collaborating with Moqtada al Sadr, who leads a powerful Shia militia and controls a bloc of 32 seats in parliament.
But Mr Jaafari defended including militia leaders such as Moqtada Sadr in the political arena, though he did not say in the interview what concessions he may have granted to Sadr, the newspaper reported.
He said he disagreed with the former US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, who barred Sadr and some other militia groups from participating in the political process.
“I look at them as part of Iraq’s de facto reality, whether some of the individual people are negative or positive,” he told The Times. “Anyone who’s part of the Iraqi reality should be part of the Iraqi house.”
The Iraqi government’s approach to militias would be to ‘meld them, take them, take their names and make them join the army and police forces. And they will respect the army or police rather than the militias’, Mr Jaafari said.
He said that key ministries would go to figures without ties to militias or clear sectarian bias.
“We insist that the ministers in the next cabinet, especially the ministers of defence and the interior, shouldn’t be connected to any militias, and they should be non-sectarian,” he said.
“They should be experienced in security work. They should keep the institutions as security institutions, not as political institutions. They should work for the central government.”
Efforts to form a government suffered another setback on Wednesday when a crucial meeting, which was to have been hosted by President Jalal Talabani, was cancelled after Sunnis and Shias clashed over who will control the security portfolio in the next government. —AFP
