Reuters, 02 April 2006
Iraq's biggest Shi'ite Islamist party will urge Ibrahim al-Jaafari to resign as prime minister, a senior parliamentarian from SCIRI said on Sunday in the first publicly hostile comments from Jaafari's key coalition ally.
"I call on Jaafari to step down as nominee for prime minister because ... the candidate ought to secure a national consensus from other lists and also international acceptance," Jalal al-Deen al-Saghir told Reuters as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was urging Iraqi leaders to find consensus.
He said he was speaking not for SCIRI but for himself. But he made clear the party's position was now against Jaafari: "This is just the beginning and the other calls will follow."
The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, is the biggest party within the Shi'ite Alliance bloc.
Saghir sits on SCIRI's main leadership council and is said by Shi'ite politicians to be close to top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The Alliance nominated Jaafari to a second term in February after an internal ballot in which Dawa party leader Jaafari defeated SCIRI's candidate by a single vote.
Since then, SCIRI leaders have resolutely defended Jaafari's position as the Alliance candidate for prime minister despite fierce opposition to him from minority Kurds and Sunnis which has led to deadlock in forming a national unity government.
But privately SCIRI officials have been trying to break the impasse and remove Jaafari without wrecking the Alliance itself.
"It has been 50 days and the Alliance has not succeeded in defusing the objections his nomination faced," Saghir said.
"This has threatened to foster new blocs that would hamper the Alliance's leadership of the political process."
Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw were holding meetings with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad on Sunday in effort to push forward the creation of a national government.
Washington and London have made little secret of believing that Jaafari is not suited to uniting and leading Iraqis as they look for a national government that can avert civil war.
On Saturday, a leading member of the Alliance, independent politician Kasim Daoud was the first such figure to call publicly for Jaafari to step aside.
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Citation: "Key ally turns against Iraqi PM," Reuters, 02 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060402/wl_nm/iraq_jaafari_alliance_dc
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