Word: straws
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...visit of Condi Rice and Jack Straw to Baghdad may have sounded the death knell on the candidacy of Ibrahim Jaafari for a second term as prime minister. Rice made clear the U.S. disdain for a second Jaafari term, saying Iraq needed a leader who could build a national unity coalition, which the incumbent had failed to do. With the Kurds and Sunnis already committed to reject Jaafari's nomination, the Rice visit seemed to embolden even the prime minister's Shi'ite rivals: For the first time, the largest faction of Jaafari's Shi'ite alliance, the Supreme Council...
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her British counterpart, Jack Straw, were the picture of transatlantic harmony as Rice visited Straw's constituency in Blackburn, England, last week. Their good cheer reflected the continuing official closeness of their two countries--the tightest of coalition partners three years into the war in Iraq despite the opposition of much of the rest of the world and the fact that, as Rice conceded last week, "we've made tactical errors, thousands of them," in Iraq. (She later said she meant it "figuratively.") But not everyone in the British government is smiling. A dispute...
...argued that the U.S. pressure against Jaafari and his current chief political ally, firebrand cleric Moqtada al Sadr, could actually backfire and bolster their position with a wave of anti-U.S. sentiment. Nonetheless, internal pressures on Jaafari to withdraw are mounting. On the same day that Rice and Straw made their visit, a senior member of the Shi'ite alliance asked Jaafari to step down, making a schism likely within the national assembly's leading voting block. If a faction of the alliance (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) backs out of its agreement to vote...
...surprise trip to Baghdad Sunday to help jump-start the faltering formation of a credible Iraqi "national unity" government, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made little secret of Washington's preference for the position of prime minister. When Rice and her traveling partner, British foreign minister Jack Straw, met with acting Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, whom the U.S. and Great Britain have quietly been lobbying against, the tone was undeniably frosty. At one point during the day, Rice took a thinly veiled swipe at Jaafari, remarking that a future prime minister ?has to be able to form a government...
...pair sent strong signals that they respect the Shi'ite alliance?s right to nominate the prime minister. Just hours before flying out of Iraq, Rice and Straw praised the most influential Shi'ite religious leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, for his ?wisdom? and emphasized the reality that the name for the top job will come from the ?largest voting block,? the Shi'ite alliance. In light of efforts to bring Sunnis into the political process, some Shi'ites were feeling neglected and the diplomats' rhetoric recognized the restraint Shi'ite groups have shown and the compromises they...