Free Republic

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bowing to intense pressure, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari agreed Thursday to allow Shiite lawmakers to find someone else to head the new government, abandoning his claim on another term in the face of Sunni and Kurdish opposition. Al-Jaafari's abrupt reversal was an apparent breakthrough in the monthslong struggle to form a national unity government. The Bush administration hopes such a government will curb Iraq's slide toward anarchy and enable the U.S. to start bringing home its 133,000 troops. Leaders in the seven-party Shiite alliance, the largest bloc in the 275-member parliament, were to meet Friday to begin...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 2 — Iraq's dominant Shiite political bloc fractured Sunday when its most powerful faction publicly demanded that the incumbent Shiite prime minister resign over his inability to form a unified government. The split came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw, the British foreign minister, paid an urgent visit to Iraqi leaders here to convey in the most forceful terms yet that their patience for the country's political paralysis was wearing thin. It was not clear whether the joint visit by Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw, the top emissaries of the two countries that led...

Since the London bombings, there has been a palpable feeling in the air here in the U.S. that another terrorist attack is imminent. Maybe not as bad as 9/11, perhaps a train or subway bombing. Or maybe it will be something worse. There were fevered rumors circulating over the last few weeks about massive attacks on New York and Washington scheduled for Aug. 6 and 9, to mark the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But now Aug. 6 and 9 have come and gone. More significantly, 47 months have come and gone since 9/11 without a major terrorist attack on...

Ibrahim al-Jaafari: A Marshall Plan could transform Iraq June 28, 2005 LAST week I was at Blair House in the centre of Washington, DC. In this house is the table on which George Marshall in June 1947 signed the plan to pump today's equivalent of $US500 billion ($647 billion) into the impoverished economies of Europe as an investment against future conflict. The plan was controversial but nobody would now deny its far-sightedness. Nazism gave way to a lasting democracy, economic devastation was replaced by slow but sure progress towards economic regeneration. Consider the Germany of 1945 and the Germany of...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 22 - Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite doctor with an Islamist bent, was chosen Tuesday by the victorious Shiite alliance as its candidate to become Iraq's new prime minister. The decision may well open a period of protracted and rancorous negotiations with a coalition of secular leaders intent on sharply curtailing Dr. Jaafari's powers or blocking him and his clerical-backed coalition. Ayad Allawi, the current prime minister, and Barham Salih, a Kurdish politician and deputy prime minister, said in separate interviews on Tuesday that without guarantees renouncing sectarianism and embracing Western democratic ideals they were poised to block...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Interim Iraqi Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari was chosen Tuesday to be his Shiite ticket's candidate for prime minister after Ahmad Chalabi dropped his bid, senior alliance officials said. Pressure from within the ranks of the winning United Iraqi Alliance forced the withdrawal of Chalabi, a one-time Pentagon (news - web sites) favorite, said Hussein al-Moussai from the Shiite Political Council, an umbrella group for 38 Shiite parties. "They wanted him to withdraw. They didn't want to push the vote to a secret ballot," al-Moussawi said. The 140 members were to put the decision between Chalabi and al-Jaafari...

For an Arab world resistant to political reform, the new Iraq taking shape under U.S. tutelage is a troubling harbinger. In the five months since U.S. forces rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein's rule, the country's ethnically and religiously diverse people have, in one giant leap, overturned decades of social and political injustice, replaced a brutal one-party system with a multitude of groups advocating a rich range of ideologies and created a free press. Shiite Muslims, a majority in Iraq oppressed for decades by a Sunni minority favored by past colonial masters and later by Saddam, are now free to worship...

Some ambiguity has been created by Saudi Arabia’s silence on the subject of the Iraqi government, the governing council created by the United States. The council has been subject to an intense opposition campaign from various Arab factions. But the fact that Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, welcomed Ibrahim Al-Jaafari in Jeddah last week broke the mental and political barrier. Perhaps it is time that those who are still against any contact with the governing council thought again. Luckily for the Iraqis, individual Arab nations have opened their doors to the governing council, thus...