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U.S., U.N. Blindsided on Iraq PM Announcement 1 hour, 55 minutes ago Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Caren Bohan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When word surfaced in Baghdad on Friday that Iyad Allawi would lead Iraq's interim government, confusion reigned both in Washington and at the United Nations, despite President Bush's assurances of an orderly handover. For weeks, the Bush administration has described the selection of the interim government as a process that was being spearheaded by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in consultation with the United States and Iraqis. Bush, in a major address on Monday, laid out...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, have agreed on the nomination of Iyad Allawi as prime minister of a new Iraqi government, a member of the Governing Council said Friday. Mahmoud Othman said Bremer and Brahimi had agreed to the council's choice of Allawi, a Governing Council member with long-time links to the CIA, as prime minister in the post-June 30 government. "We had a meeting with Bremer and Brahimi and they both agreed and congratulated him and were happy about it," Othman told Reuters.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi Governing Council on Friday nominated one of its own members, Iyad Allawi, a Shiite Muslim physician who spent years in exile, to become prime minister of the new government to take power June 30, members said. The chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, was at Friday's council session and congratulated Allawi on his nomination, said Mustafa al-Marayati, an aide to council member Raja Habib al-Khuzaai. The council also planned to nominate a president and two vice presidents. But it was not known whether U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has approved the choices. Brahimi has...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iyad Allawi, a prominent member of Iraq (news - web sites)'s interim Governing Council, has stepped down as the head of the executive body's security commission, his party's newspaper said. Baghdad daily, mouthpiece of the Iraqi National Accord, said he "renounces his mission at the head of the commission. "The commission does not have prerogatives to find effective solutions to the deterioration of the security situation" in the country, it said. The paper said Allawi had submitted a letter to the current Governing Council president, Massud Barzani, in which he expressed "reservations on the measures adopted by...

<p>Deadly ambush teams struck U.S. Army targets from west to north in the arc of resistance around Baghdad, and the interim Iraqi leader called Sunday for an immediate mobilization of the old Iraqi army to help the harried Americans.</p> <p>The United States would "speed the process of relieving the burden on its troops" by recalling the disbanded Iraqi military, said Iyad Allawi, current president of the Iraqi Governing Council. The idea got a cool reception, however, from Baghdad's U.S.-led occupation authorities.</p>

<p>Iraq's American-backed administration failed in its first week to choose a president, abandoning that mission in favor of a weak, three-man rotating leadership. The top U.S. official in Iraq -- who hand-picked the Governing Council -- returned to Washington while an insurgency killed another American soldier Saturday.</p>