Governing Body, U.S. Pick CIA Link Allawi as Iraq PM
By Tom Perry
BAGHDAD - Iyad Allawi, a former supporter of Saddam Hussein who then worked with the CIA to topple him, was chosen as prime minister of Iraq Friday.
U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, whom Washington had asked to form a new Iraqi government, confirmed the choice of the British-educated neurologist through a spokesman.
He will head an interim government due to take over the country from the U.S. occupation authority on June 30.
Allawi aide Hani Adris told Reuters that Allawi's fellow members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council had nominated him at a meeting in Baghdad Friday and that Brahimi and U.S. officials in Baghdad endorsed him.
"There was a meeting of the Governing Council and Dr. Allawi was unanimously chosen as prime minister," Adris said.
Five Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded in clashes between U.S. troops and Shi'ite militia around the holy city Najaf, a day after militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr offered a truce to end two months of fighting. Two U.S. soldiers were also wounded.
But U.S. officials, clearly eager to calm the situation before handing over power on June 30, played down the incidents and said they were still hopeful the cease-fire would hold.
Two Japanese journalists were killed in an attack on their car 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.
Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said only that he was waiting to hear from Brahimi on the matter.
Allawi hails from Iraq's long oppressed 60 percent Shi'ite majority. A Shi'ite is also expected to head the cabinet.
FORMER BAATHIST
The interim government will take over running the country from the United States on June 30. Brahimi is helping select a 30-member team, including a president and 26 ministers. Their prime task will be to organize elections next year.
Allawi, a wealthy secular Shi'ite and former member of Saddam's Baath Party, is a relative of Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon (news - web sites) favorite who has fallen out with Washington. But the two are not regarded as particularly close.
Chalabi was himself long seen as Washington's likely choice to lead post-Saddam Iraq.
Allawi, who is also a wealthy businessman, went into exile after turning against Saddam and in 1990 he formed the Iraqi National Accord, a party backed by the CIA and British intelligence and including many former Baathists who opposed the Baghdad regime.
Iraqi secret police were sent to assassinate Allawi in a London suburb in 1978 when he struck up a relationship with the British secret service, according to the book "Saddam Hussein -- An American Obsession," by Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn.
The assassins burst into his bedroom and tried to hack him to death with knives and axes, but fled when his father-in-law arrived on the scene, the authors wrote.
Dan Senor, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad, said the Council had recommended a candidate for prime minister who he did not name, and added that it was up to Brahimi to name the team.
TROUBLE IN NAJAF
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 weekly Friday sermon at Kufa, just outside Najaf.
Aides said Sadr had stayed away for fear of being captured.
His Mehdi Army fighters returned in force to the streets and fired on a rival cleric.
U.S. troops had suspended offensive operations after elders from the Shi'ite majority persuaded Sadr to offer a truce as a step to ending the uprising that has cost hundreds of lives.
But U.S. officials refused to drop demands for Sadr's arrest on a murder charge, and said they would fire in self-defense.
U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said of the clashes: "These would appear to be violations of that agreement that he signed. ... We can't really tell you if these are characteristic of a larger group splitting away from Moqtada or if it's just some of the groups that haven't got the word.
"We are generally sanguine. ... It could take a couple of days before the true cease-fire that he offered holds."
An official at the hospital in Kufa said three people had died in gunfire and mortar shelling in the town, and eight were wounded. In Najaf, 3 miles to the southwest, two were killed and six were hurt, hospital staff said.
Two U.S. soldiers were also wounded in the clashes after their Humvee military vehicle came under fire from militia fighters in Kufa, a U.S. military spokeswoman said.
Thousands of Sadr's followers, some of them armed, skirted U.S. 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.
In Najaf, witnesses said Mehdi Army gunmen opened fire when Sadreddin al-Kabanji, a critic of Sadr who supports Iraq's senior ayatollah Ali al-Sistani left the Imam Ali mosque after prayers. No one appeared to be injured in the incident.
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The CIA agents gets his reward huh? Do I possibly see another Saddam in the making? Or maybe this guy will "follow orders" better than his predicessor... Isn't that exactly how the Bathe Party and Saddam came into power, by working for the CIA and betraying the Iraqi (socialist) revolution? The CIA is behind almost every person in power now adays. The new world order is solidifying. We live in scary times.
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