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Think of him as a chameleon. Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's Prime Minister, owes his survival to an ability to adapt his political persona to the prevailing circumstances. During his 24-year exile from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, he dropped his given name and went by "Jawad," to avoid detection by the dictator's spies. Returning to Baghdad in 2003, Maliki seemed no different from the legion of Shi'ite partisans who took up posts in the U.S.-installed interim government. He brought vigor and venom to his job on the committee responsible for purging the government of Saddam...
...knew the old Jawad. Sunni and Kurdish leaders have accused him of employing tribal councils to shore up his personal standing at the expense of rivals, just as Saddam did. Vice President Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a prominent Shi'ite, has openly criticized the centralization of power in the Prime Minister's office. "We don't want another dictator in Baghdad," says Maysoon al-Damluji, a secular Member of Parliament. "It worries us all that [Maliki] is beginning to behave like a tyrant...
...some of the most memorable diplomatic moments in history including the first ministerial meetings held between North and South Korea in 1989, the milestone sitdown between South African President F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela in 1992 and the 1994 draft agreement on Gaza and Jericho reached by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and PLO head Yasser Arafat...
...briefing in the South African capital Pretoria after the 14-hour meeting - the latest in a series of regional summits on the issue. An accompanying communiqué said agreement had been reached on key points, including the naming of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai to a newly created post of Prime Minister on February 11, and the shared control of the Home Affairs ministry, which controls the police, for six months...
Prospects for al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, and the political figures who stood at the edge of it have steadily dimmed since last spring, when government forces of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki emerged as the de facto victors in battles with the Mahdi Army across southern Iraq and Baghdad. Weeks of fighting in the early months of 2008 ended in a stalemate. Since then, Iraqi security forces have rounded up scores of Sadrists with the help of U.S. troops, effectively hollowing out the movement's street power and political influence. Meanwhile, the vast popularity that al-Sadr...