Word: allawi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...control, there's little reason to believe that after June 30 it will pay any heed to Bremer directives on matters such as Moqtada Sadr - particularly when they make no sense in light of its own plans to create a new political consensus among Iraqis. Indeed, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi this week specifically called on Sadr to disband his militia and instead compete in the realm of politics and stand for election next year. The same message, no doubt, will have been transmitted by Sistani, who met with Sadr last weekend, signaling the extent to which the upstart firebrand...
...members of the council said he was too religious. Iraqi and U.N. officials say that after al-Shahristani withdrew his name from consideration, members of the Governing Council advised Brahimi that they had agreed to back one of their own for the new government's most powerful post--Iyad Allawi, a physician and Shi'ite Muslim who is head of the Iraqi National Accord (I.N.A.). By then, Brahimi--who insists his job is to broker a consensus on the new government, not to handpick its members--had little choice but to go along. "Brahimi decided that since this is their...
...reaction to Allawi's appointment highlighted the near impossibility of choosing an unelected Iraqi government that can command wide support. Almost from the moment they endorsed Allawi, Governing Council members rushed to declare that he was no one's top choice. "He's a compromise candidate," says council member Mahmoud Othman. "Nobody wanted him at the start, but in the end nobody rejected him." Allawi is a former member of Saddam's Baath Party who left Iraq for London in the mid-'70s and was later attacked by an ax-wielding assassin when he refused Saddam's demands to return...
...Brahimi spent last week working "around the clock" to finalize names of the new government, soliciting opinions from dozens of Iraqi leaders and U.S. advisers. The official says that two weeks ago Brahimi narrowed the list of candidates for the Prime Minister slot to four names and settled on Allawi just as the Governing Council was rallying around him. A senior Administration official calls the selection process a "three-dimensional game of chess...
...that, Allawi's appointment has stirred up the kind of controversy the Administration and Brahimi hoped to avoid. An imposing secular Shi'ite who remains close to the U.S. intelligence community--the I.N.A. continues to receive CIA funding--Allawi is a reassuring figure to the White House, which hopes to maintain influence over Iraq's future through its ties to the new body's most powerful executive. The CIA has long backed him over his voluble rival, Ahmad Chalabi, to whom Allawi is related by marriage. A Brahimi aide claims that Allawi's appointment also received Sistani's blessing, which...