Word: jaafari
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Sometime in the next day or two, the U.S. and Great Britain, along with the Kurds and the Sunnis, may get their wish - Iraq's Shi'ites could deny Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari a second term in office, enabling the country finally, four months after its most recent election, to form a government. But as Iraq lurches ever more dangerously into a vortex of sectarian and insurgent violence, the idea that simply replacing the incumbent will magically forge a national consensus and reverse Iraq's morbid slide may be more wishful thinking...
...Jaafari's Sunni detractors complain that he refused to rein in Shi'ite militias terrorizing their communities, while the Kurds don't like the fact that he refused to back their territorial claim on the mixed oil-rich city of Kirkuk. But these positions were not personal whims of Jaafari's so much as a reflection of the demands of his base in the majority Shi'ite community. And by nixing Jaafari, the dominant Shi'ite bloc will simply get to nominate another candidate under pressure from his political base...
...Jaafari's failure to achieve a unity government also represents an opportunity to seek a friendlier face in the top job of Iraq's new government, although it's far from clear that Abdul Mahdi is any less beholden to Iran than Jaafari...
...Although it's not yet a done deal, getting rid of Jaafari may yet prove to be the easy part. It will certainly take a lot more than changing the nominee for prime minister to forge a strong government of national unity in an Iraq where most political leaders say they want to avoid a civil war, yet seem incapable of making the compromises required for success...
Acting Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari doesn?t fit the bill, as far as she and Straw are concerned, because he has been unable to pull together a coalition government so far, and they don?t think his odds are improving. Though they insisted in public they weren?t meddling in internal Iraqi politics, they are known to have told Jaafari bluntly in private that the numbers were against...