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BAGHDAD : Two senior Sunni Muslims were competing to become Saddam Hussein's successor as president of Iraq, as an interim government took shape and fresh violence broke out in the holy city of Najaf.
Iraqi politicians and US officials locked horns over whether Ghazi al-Yawar, the chair of the Governing Council, or elder statesman Adnan Pachachi would take on the largely ceremonial post of president.
"They want to impose someone on us. We won't accept this. This is not the way to hand over sovereignty," leading Kurdish member Mahmud Othman told AFP, referring to US officials.
US overseer in Iraq, Paul Bremer, and UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi were said to prefer Pachachi, a moderate and former foreign minister during the 1960s.
Othman accused the United Nations and the coalition of conniving at the expense of Iraqis, despite the fact that Brahimi was not at the meeting.
Coalition spokesman Dan Senor denied allegations that the coalition was interfering.
"We have not been quote on quote leaning on anybody to support one candidate for the presidency over another... We are not pressuring or engaging anyone, working them, to go one direction or another," he told a news conference.
Governing Council spokesman Hamid al-Kifaey said the body would postpone choosing between Yawar, a leader of one of the largest tribes in Iraq, and Pachachi until Monday. "We have equal respect for both people," he said.
According to an Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, one of the two vice-presidents would probably be Roj Nuri Shawis from the Kurdistan Democratic Party and a top lieutenant to Kurdish chieftain Massoud Barzani.
The other was still undecided and was between Ibrahim Jaffari from the religious Shiite party Dawa, and Adel Abdel Mahdi from the rival Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution.
Kifaey said he expected interim defence minister Ali Allawi to hold onto his portfolio, and Samir al-Sumaiydah to stay on as interior minister.
A former exiled dissident and CIA-backed coup plotter, Allawi, cousin of the defence minister, has come under fire for his alleged ties to Washington, a friendship which observers say is unlikely to endear him to the Iraqi masses.
Against the backdrop of political wrangling, at least two men were killed when gunmen open fired on a convoy of three sports-utility vehicles in Baghdad, police told AFP.
One of the dead men, whose face was covered in blood, was wearing a combat vest and a pistol was resting on the floor of the vehicle, an AFP correspondent said.
It was not immediately clear if the men were employees of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority or private contractors, but SUVs are the vehicles of choice for coalition employees.
In central Iraq, a ceasefire between the militia of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr and US forces continued to look shaky as violence continued for the third day (correct) after the truce was announced Thursday.
The fighting lasted for about an hour and appeared to be coming from the near the city's vast cemetery and the 1920 Revolution Square, the scenes of fierce clashes in recent weeks between Sadr loyalists and US troops.
The military said the clashes began when a US patrol came under fire
Fighting resumed in the mid-afternoon when mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades rocked the cemetery area as US tanks made another approach.
In the western town of Ramadi, Iraqi police surrounded the offices of politician Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) party.
Relations between the US-led coalition and Chalabi have deteriorated since the police and US military raided Chalabi's home in Baghdad on May 21.
The one-time pal of Washington's neo-conservatives, Chalabi has been accused of peddling US intelligence to Iran, and his organisation of blackmailing former Baathists and committing acts of torture.
The US death toll rose again with the military announcing that three marines were killed Saturday in the volatile western province of al-Anbar. More than 800 US soldiers have been killed since the 2003 US-led invasion.
A mortar attack on a military base near the northern city of Mosul killed a mother and her seven-year-old daughter, police and witnesses said.
And a bodyguard and driver were killed Saturday in a failed assassination attempt on newspaper editor Ismail Zayer in Baghdad, Zayer said.
- AFP
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