The gathering storm ....
Wednesday Jun 2 2004. All times are London time.
Published: June 3 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: June 3 2004 5:00
A key Iraqi Shia religious party complained yesterday of "marginalisation and exclusion" from the newly appointed interim government, as US forces continued their efforts to quash a rebellion by Shia fighters in Iraq's south.
Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations' envoy to Iraq, admitted that the choice of new government to be led by Iyad Allawi, the prime minister designate, was unlikely to please all Iraqis. He called for patience until elections could be held and argued that the 30 officials selected on Tuesday were broadly representative of the country.
Coalition officials have been counting on the co-operation of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), an Iranian-backed party, for help in ending the fighting that has raged throughout Iraq's south.
But Sciri yesterday added its voice to that of Daawa, another major Shia religious party, saying that it had reservations about how the new caretaker government had been chosen.
On Tuesday, immediately after the new cabinet was announced, a Daawa official said that the new ministerial posts had been decided behind closed doors.
The two Shia parties are important for their potential to act as counterweights to more radical religious figures such as Moqtada al- Sadr, the Shia cleric who launched an uprising against US troops in April.
Militants loyal to Mr Sadr yesterday clashed with US forces near a mosque in the southern town of Kufa and in Baghdad, and officials said six Iraqis were killed and 40 others wounded. The fighting threatens to end a truce negotiated last week between Mr Sadr's forces and the coalition.
The disgruntled Shia parties have senior posts in Mr Allawi's administration - in the case of Dawa, Ibrahim Jaafari, its leader, as vice-president and, in the case of Sciri, the minister of finance - but they are less widely represented than they were previously under the governing council.
"Will every Iraqi be satisfied with the present government? Definitely not," Mr Brahimi said yesterday in Baghdad the day after the new government was announced.
A senior coalition official said yesterday that the coalition and the UN had been careful to obtain the approval of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shia cleric, in settling upon Mr Allawi, himself a Shia but a prominent secular politician.
The official said that Mr Sistani had been shown a list of names by intermediaries of potential prime ministers and had not objected to Mr Allawi's inclusion on the list.
The issue is a sensitive one for the coalition. In March senior members from the now-defunct Governing Council claimed to have gained Mr Sistani's approval for a temporary administrative law that is now the legal basis for the transitional period until elections can be held.
However, shortly after the document was signed, after several days of intense negotiations, Mr Sistani publicly denounced the law as carrying no legal weight and as an obstacle to arriving at a permanent constitution.
This time around, the Coalition Provisional Authority official said, a number of sources had confirmed that Mr Sistani had no objection to Mr Allawi as prime minister.
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