1.

Special

World

ETHNIC LEADER ENVISIONS ALLIANCE OF KURDS, SHIITES
By Cyrille Cartier

USA Today
February 13, 2005

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-02-13-talabani_x.htm

QALA CHWALAN, Iraq -- Sitting in his mountain retreat, Iraqi presidential contender Jalal Talabani flexed some new political muscle.

"The Shiites are insisting on having the post of prime minister, and they are supporting Kurds to have the post of president," Talabani said.

The Kurds, long oppressed by successive Iraqi regimes, are now positioned to play the role of power broker in Iraq's new government.

A slate of the two main Kurdish parties won about 26% of the vote. A leading Shiite slate won at least 48% of the vote. The slates will get a proportional number of seats in the Transitional National Assembly.

Talabani said Sunday he is the ideal candidate to unify Iraq after lopsided election results that left Sunni Arabs isolated and angry.

"We need to have a kind of consensus among Iraqis about the constitution, about how to reshape Iraq, about bringing Arab Sunnis to democratic process," said Talabani, one of the two main Kurdish leaders. "Because we have good relations with all Iraqi parties and partners, we can play this role of reconciliation."

The Shiites will probably have to form an alliance with the Kurds. The selection of a presidential council, for example, requires a two-thirds majority in the assembly. The presidential council, a president and two vice presidents, will choose the prime minister, the most powerful post in the new government.

Although there is no formal deal between the Shiites and the Kurds, their longstanding opposition to Saddam Hussein's regime has created a strong alliance between them, Talabani said.

Many Iraqis remain wary of Kurdish intentions and expect them to eventually demand full independence from Iraq. Kurdish officials say if they are given a strong dose of autonomy and a significant role in the new government they'll be happy to stay part of Iraq.

"The stronger we are in Iraq, the more we'll be likely to stay part of Iraq," said Talabani's son, Qubad, the U.S.-based representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main Kurdish parties.

Kurds, who are mostly Sunni Muslim, make up about 20% of the Iraqi population. They have maintained administrative control of the Kurdish north since 1991, under a United Nations resolution that designated the area as a "no-fly zone" after the Persian Gulf War. [NOTE: This is incorrect. "The flight exclusion zones [were] set up by the United States and Western allies unilaterally after the 1991 Gulf War to prevent Baghdad from attacking rebellious Kurds in the north. Later the zone was expanded to prevent attacks against Shi'ite Muslims in the south" (Reuters, Nov. 19, 2002) --H.A.]

Kurdish leaders have vowed support for a federal pluralistic Iraq even though most Kurds want independence, as shown in a recent unofficial referendum in which 1.9 million voted for secession.

"When you have a democracy, it's almost impossible to hold people in a country that they hate," said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who documented attacks against the Kurds when he served as senior adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

A more immediate Kurdish concern are areas under the central government's control that Kurds want included within the boundary of a future federal zone, including the multiethnic city of Kirkuk.

Kurdish families displaced during Saddam's "Arabization" program must be allowed to return, and Arab families who replaced them must be sent back, Talabani said. The former dictator deported thousands of Kurdish residents in order to change the demography of the oil-rich city. "They must go back home, all of them," Talabani said.

Talabani said he wants to bring Sunni Arabs into the political process. He said he would make contacts with Sunni Arab leadership.

Sunni Arabs have long dominated the country and are having trouble adjusting to a country where Shiite Arabs, who account for about 60% of Iraq's 26 million people, and Kurds will play a significant role in government, Talabani said.

"Sunnis, in my opinion, committed a big mistake after the collapse of the regime when they were fighting against the coalition," Talabani said. He estimated that a Sunni-led insurgency would require the presence of coalition forces for "about two years" until the Iraqi security forces and army were fully operational.

"We must understand that those who are fighting come from different groups," Talabani said.

He said he would agree to talks with Iraqis who believe they are fighting foreign occupiers. But Talabani said the new government should not negotiate with foreign fighters in Iraq.

2.

SHIITE AND KURDISH SLATES WIN 75% OF VOTES IN IRAQ
By Patrick J. McDonnell and T. Christian Miller

** A provisional tally shows the two groups vastly outpolled the historically dominant Sunni Arabs last month. Allawi's ticket is third. **

Los Angeles Times
February 14, 2005

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-iraq14feb14,0,2006557.story

BAGHDAD -- Parties representing a popular Shiite slate and Kurds captured almost 75% of the vote in Iraq's landmark election, a momentous power shift in the heart of the Middle East, according to provisional results released Sunday. The tally also confirmed minimal participation in the poll by Iraq's long-dominant Sunni Arabs.

Sunday's results validated widespread projections that a Shiite slate led by a cleric with ties to Iran finished first in the Jan. 30 poll, garnering almost half the votes in the election for a 275-member transitional national assembly. Although it almost doubled the total of the second largest vote-getter, the Shiite list of candidates fell just short of securing the majority of votes despite its leaders' predictions.

But the slate should emerge with slightly more than half of the representatives in the assembly, where seats will be assigned under a complex formula. This will require the top vote-getting bloc to make alliances with other slates to secure the two-thirds majority needed to select a three-member presidency council charged with naming a new prime minister.

A Kurdish coalition finished second with about a quarter of the votes, ensuring the Kurds will have significant roles in key government posts and in drafting the constitution, the chief tasks of the new assembly.

Finishing a distant third was a ticket headed by Iyad Allawi, who was approved by the U.S. as the current interim prime minister. Allawi's slate won almost 14% of the votes. A secular Shiite with longtime links to the CIA, Allawi is said to be lining up allies in a bid to be named prime minister in the new government.

Even before the final results were in, observers say, backroom deals were being cut for the top jobs in a nation where billions of dollars in U.S. aid has failed to quell a raging insurgency, tame chronic unemployment and fix a devastated infrastructure.

The first complete tally from last month's vote revealed that 8.5 million Iraqis cast ballots, a turnout rate of 58%. But in Al Anbar province, the war-ravaged Sunni heartland to the west of the capital, only 2% of eligible voters cast ballots, results showed. Electoral authorities are giving parties three days to file complaints before certifying the results of Iraq's first multiparty balloting in more than half a century.

President Bush welcomed Sunday's results.

"I congratulate the Iraqi people for defying terrorist threats and setting their country on the path of democracy and freedom," Bush said in a statement issued by the White House. "And I congratulate every candidate who stood for election and those who will take office once the results are certified."

But it was probably not the election result the Bush administration had hoped for when it decided to invade Iraq almost two years ago and topple the secular regime of Saddam Hussein.

Known as the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite slate is a diverse group led by a black-turbaned cleric, Abdelaziz Hakim, who spent time as an exile in Iran. It includes secular Shiites, some Sunni sheiks and adherents of firebrand Shiite preacher Muqtada Sadr, who has battled the U.S. occupation and been at odds with the Shiite political establishment in the holy city of Najaf.

"There's a possibility that they'll stay united, and I think there's a possibility that they'll break apart," a senior Western official said of the Shiite-led slate.

Shiites are believed to make up about 60% of Iraq's population, although they and Kurds were long repressed under the regime of Hussein, which favored minority Sunni Arabs.

For decades, Sunni Arab dominance in Iraq had been viewed in Arab capitals and much of the West as a bulwark against the neighboring Shiite Muslim state of Iran and its theocratic regime.

In this election, however, the turbaned image of Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiites, adorned campaign posters and inspired millions of historically disenfranchised followers to vote for the United Iraqi Alliance.

"We have witnessed happy and marvelous episodes," declared an exultant interim Vice President Ibrahim Jafari, now a candidate for prime minister and, like many leaders of the Shiite bloc, a long-time exile in Iran.

"We still have the future ahead of us," he told an Arabic language television station.

Jafari and other leading Shiite politicians have denied any intention to implement an Iranian-like regime, a fear voiced by many here and elsewhere in the Arab world. But Shiite leaders have stressed the need to recognize Iraq's essential Islamic "character" in forming a new government. It remains uncertain how that recognition will play out in the new constitution.

The Bush administration hopes that a representative government in Iraq will be independent of Iran and will gradually drain support from the insurgency -- eventually allowing for a withdrawal of U.S. troops. Newly trained Iraqi units should be able to take over much of the fight within a year or so, U.S. officials say. The insurgency is expected to drag on for years, a top U.S. diplomat conceded recently.

After the election results were announced in the convention center in the heavily barricaded Green Zone in central Baghdad, several mortar shells or rockets struck the U.S.-controlled area. There was no word on casualties.

Neither the Shiites nor the Kurds have backed demands from Sunni Arab politicians and others that the U.S. set a timetable for withdrawing its troops. U.S. officials say such a timetable would be playing into the insurgents' hands.

The big losers in the election, as expected, were Sunni Arabs, who had ruled Iraq for decades. Sunni Arabs provide most of the recruits for Iraq's insurgency. It remains unknown whether the election results will further alienate them or prompt reconciliation with the new, U.S.-backed transitional government.

"It's unfortunate that large areas of Iraq and large segments of the Iraqi population were disenfranchised," Adnan Pachachi, a senior Sunni politician who ran on a Sunni slate that fared poorly, told CNN. "I have a feeling that many of the Sunni parties that boycotted . . . may have regretted their not taking part in the election."

Shiite leaders spoke of reconciliation and vowed to reach out to Sunni Arabs.

"We are all calling on others . . . to join us in forming a government of national unity," Hussein Shahristani, a leader of the Shiite-dominated list and another prospective prime minister, told reporters.

Reaching out to Sunni Arab representatives will be crucial, as Sunnis -- like Kurds and Shiites -- can block any constitution by securing two-thirds of the votes in three provinces in a referendum scheduled for later this year. That constitution will set the terms for an election for a permanent government slated to be held in December.

The various groups in the new assembly have conflicting agendas that could hinder coalition building. The Shiite and Kurdish slates, for instance, disagree on several key issues, including the role of religion in government. Shiite leaders are believed to be cool to Kurdish demands for more autonomy in their northern region, especially the city of Kirkuk and its surrounding oil fields. The Kurds, in turn, are largely secular and generally unreceptive to Shiite moves to bolster religious authority.

The United Iraqi Alliance's slate includes Ahmad Chalabi, the onetime Pentagon favorite turned U.S. pariah because of alleged leaks of confidential information to Iran -- an allegation denied by Chalabi, a secular Shiite. He is despised by many Sunni Arabs because of his zeal in rooting out former members of Hussein's Baath Party from the Iraqi government.

Both the Shiites and Kurds are keen to purge many ex-Baathists from the government, a process known as de-Baathification. But such a move seems likely to aggravate Sunni Muslims already marginalized in the transitional government. Sunni leaders have called for a halt to de-Baathification.

On Sunday, the Kurds were lobbying for one of their leaders, Jalal Talabani, to become the nation's largely ceremonial president, and are also said to have their eyes on slots in the defense, interior and other ministries.

"We are the second most powerful list and it is our right to have our share," said Imad Ahmed, a Kurd who is deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan regional government. "If the security situation were better we would have achieved more."

The Kurdish-led alliance captured almost 60% of the vote in the northern province. Exultant Kurds, victims of a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign during Hussein's rule, celebrated their victory Sunday on the streets of harshly divided Kirkuk.

"This is a historical day for Iraqis," declared Shiar Jabar, a 45-year-old Kurd who had tears in his eyes as he spoke of sons lost during Hussein's rule.

Ethnic Arabs and Turkomens have complained bitterly that Kurds have cashed in on their close U.S. ties to wrest control of the mixed city.

--Contributing to this report were Times special correspondents Said Rifai, Salar Jaff, and Caesar Ahmed in Baghdad; Ali Windawi in Kirkuk; Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf; Hassan Halawa in Samawa; and other special correspondents in Mosul and Baghdad.

3.

News Analysis

SHIITES WALK SOFTLY IN NEW LANDSCAPE
By John Daniszewski

Los Angeles Times
February 14, 2005

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-analysis14feb14,0,7042605.story?coll=la-home-headlines

BAGHDAD -- The lopsided victory by Iraq's Shiite Muslim alliance gives it the biggest voice in shaping the nation's new government and constitution. But at the moment of their triumph, Shiite leaders have decided to accentuate moderation and inclusiveness to win over their political rivals.

The need to defeat the insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and almost paralyzed reconstruction, along with checks negotiated into the transitional law, will keep the Shiites from moves that would offend other groups, such as trying to impose Islamic law, politicians here say.

The Shiite alliance, tacitly backed by the nation's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, is likely to control a slim majority in the new 275-seat national assembly, whereas Sunni Muslim Arabs won perhaps seven spots. As a result, some people fear that Iraq's Shiite clerics will be tempted to emulate Shiite mullahs in neighboring Iran and push for an Islamic republic.

But if one listens to what the Shiite slate has been saying, there has been a reassuring consistency: Its members are not bent on dominating the political scene, even though Shiites are a majority in Iraq and were long repressed under Saddam Hussein. Rather, they want to cooperate with Iraq's minority groups, including Sunni Arabs, favored under Hussein, and ethnic Kurds, most of whom are also Sunni.

Abdelaziz Hakim, leader of the slate, has pledged a "government of national unity." Talks with minority groups have been going on in some detail, said Mowaffak Rubaie, the country's national security advisor and a leading voice in the new alliance of Shiites.

Instead of trying to cobble together enough allies to form a strong parliamentary majority to ram through legislation, he said, the slate is seeking to create a government that would include all, or as many as possible, of the 12 electoral slates that won seats in the assembly -- plus some Sunni groups that did not participate.

And instead of grabbing all the best government ministries for itself, it is considering using a complex point system that would give weight to each of the main political, religious and ethnic groups.

For instance, if a government minister is a Shiite, his or her two deputies might be a Kurd and a Sunni, and their assistants might be Turkmen or Christian, he said.

Although drawing a line at appeasing former Baathists or extremists who have committed crimes against the Iraqi people, and promising an early drive to cleanse the Iraqi security forces of infiltrators, he said the new government would be "one of the most inclusive, and certainly the most representative government in the history of Iraq."

U.S. officials, who are wary of excessive Iranian influence in Iraq and believe that broad participation in the new government is necessary to quell the insurgency and allow a reduction in American troops, are voicing confidence that the Shiites will approach their newfound power pragmatically.

"There is a lot of reason to believe that the Shias, while they want to govern, don't want a war [and] don't want the country to split," a senior U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad said last week. "There is an awful lot being talked about among Shia politicians about the need to reach out to Sunnis. . . . How do they include them? How do they reassure them?

"All this goes back to this giant fundamental question: Can Iraqis find a basis on which to live with each other? And that question is just starting to be entered into, and it's one that ultimately they have to answer," he added.

If they succeed, he said, "the whole thing can come out in a somewhat civilized and beneficial fashion. And if they can't, it's going to be a disaster and there won't be anything we can do about it."

The gravest challenge for the newly elected officials is how to engage the Sunni Arab community, whose participation in the election process was anemic. Some Sunnis boycotted the vote, while others did not take part for fear they would be targeted by insurgents.

Sunnis make up one-fifth of the population of Iraq, and probably a greater share of its managerial class and intellectual elite because they were favored under the rule of Hussein. Embittered and feeling marginalized, it remains to be seen whether they will participate in the new government despite their fall from the political heavens.

One concern is that Sunnis will decide to stay outside the system and continue to back the insurgency against the new Iraqi authorities, even though the latter now have an electoral mandate to shore up their claim to power.

Shiite and Kurdish politicians have recognized that danger and are already asking Sunni Arabs to participate, as experts and advisors, in devising the constitution that is supposed to be written and ratified by mid-October.

The response has been heartening, said Dr. Rajaa Habib Khuzaai, a Shiite and newly elected national assembly member who attended one meeting between interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and Sunni clerics when he asked for their help.

"I was in the room, and nobody said no," she said.

Among secular Iraqis and Sunnis, the results have raised strong worries that Hakim's slate could put together the simple majority of votes needed to pass most legislation. That would give it free rein to put a distinctively Shiite stamp on Iraq over a range of domestic and foreign policies.

For instance, although the transitional law says that Islam will be a source of inspiration for legislation, the exact meaning of that has been left open to interpretation.

Will Sharia, or Islamic law, become the main reference for national policy on divorce, censorship, the role of women in society, broadcasting and public morality, as many Shiite clerics and their followers insist?

Will mullahs and ayatollahs, issuing edicts and opinions from their mosques and councils, become hidden powers shaping and exercising vetoes in the legislative process through representatives of Hakim's slate?

Both seem possible, based on the outcome of the vote. But Hakim's Shiite bloc is not a monolith; it contains moderates as well as religious conservatives. Some of its most prominent members, including two often mentioned as candidates for prime minister, are secular.

Some international observers have dismissed the idea that Iraq will closely follow Iran's theocratic model.

"Iraqis have shown a very strong degree of independence from Iran, including the Iranian variant of Shia Islam, despite, in many cases, being Shia, and in spite of having those alliances of convenience with Iran during the Saddam regime," said one Western official in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Sunni Arabs and Kurds also are taking heart from a rule that says Iraq's new constitution must be approved by 16 of the nation's 18 provinces. That rule effectively gives giving Kurds and Sunnis veto power over the document, because either group is a majority in at least three provinces.

Another rule mandates that the president and two vice presidents selected by the new national assembly must be approved by a two-thirds vote. That will force the largest Shiite bloc to make alliances in order to elect those leaders.

For secular Sunni Arabs, liberals, leftists, Christians and many Kurds, who for the most part take a more relaxed approach to religious issues, the fear of religious domination of national legislation is real, and one more reason to press for as much regional and provincial autonomy in the next constitution as they can obtain.

But those problems remain in the future. For now, many Iraqi politicians are just happy that they have made it this far.

"I am delighted and thrilled," said Khuzaai, an obstetrician and women's advocate savoring her first night Sunday as an elected representative on Allawi's list. "I never dreamed to be in politics, and now I am in the middle of this historic situation."

4.

Politics

SHIITE PARTIES TRIUMPH IN IRAQ ELECTIONS

Daily Star (Beirut)
February 14, 2005

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=12639

BAGHDAD -- A Shiite Islamist bloc won Iraq's first election since Saddam Hussein's overthrow, sealing the political resurgence of the long-oppressed majority but leaving the restive Sunni Arab minority in the cold.

The Electoral Commission announced on Sunday evening that the Shiite list, known as the United Iraqi Alliance, took more than 47 percent of the vote. But that was less than the bloc had predicted and leaves it six or seven seats short of a majority in Parliament.

A powerful Kurdish alliance came second with 25 percent, while a grouping led by interim Prime Minister and U.S.-backed Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, came third with nearly 14 percent.

Few Sunni Arabs took part in the Jan. 30 voting, which means the minority that has traditionally ruled modern Iraq and held a privileged position under Saddam, a Sunni, will have just a handful of National Assembly seats and little political clout.

That could stoke the insurgency in Iraq being fought mainly by Sunni Arab guerrillas who want to drive out U.S.-led troops and overthrow the American-backed government.

The commission said 8.55 million Iraqis, or 58 percent of registered voters, cast ballots in the Jan. 30 poll, Iraq's first multi-party election for half a century. The number of valid votes was around 8.45 million.

The vote was for a 275-member National Assembly that must agree on a president and two vice-presidents by a two-thirds majority. Those three officials will then agree on a prime minister and Cabinet, and their choices must be approved by a majority in the assembly.

Sunni Arab turnout was low. Only 2 percent of eligible voters in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province cast ballots, and only 29 percent in the mainly Sunni Salahadin province. Sunnis make up about 20 percent of Iraq's 27 million people.

The main Sunni Arab group in the assembly will probably be a bloc led by President Ghazi al-Yawar, although it is set to have only around five seats. A secular party led by Sunni elder statesmen Adnan Pachachi looked unlikely to win any seats.

"The image of Iraq that these results suggest is not real. That is obvious," Pachachi said.

In another sign of tensions ahead, Kurds in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk erupted in celebrations after results showed them well ahead in the provincial vote -- an outcome that will anger Arabs and Turkmens, who also lay claim to the city.

With no bloc gaining dominance on its own, there has already been furious horse-trading to try to strike deals.

The United Iraqi Alliance insists that one of its candidates -- probably current Finance Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi or Vice President Ibrahim Jaafari - be appointed prime minister.

The Kurds want their candidate, Jalal Talabani, to be president or prime minister. Under one scenario, the two blocs could do a deal with a Shiite candidate getting the prime minister's job and Talabani the presidency.

But Allawi, who visited Kurdistan on Saturday and met Talabani, may also try to form alliances to improve his chances.

If he can make a deal with the Kurds and persuade some of the Shiite alliance to break away, he may be able to keep his job as the country's president.

Even if Sunni Arabs are largely shut out of government, they could still potentially veto the new Iraqi Constitution due to be written this year, causing political deadlock.

One of the main tasks of the National Assembly is to oversee the drafting of a Constitution which must be approved by a referendum.

Sunni insurgents who have relentlessly attacked U.S. troops, Iraqi security forces and officials have also turned their violence on Shiites, raising fears of sectarian civil war.

Iraq has announced it will close its land borders from Thursday to try to prevent a flood of foreign pilgrims arriving for Ashura, one of the holiest events in the Shiite calendar, when millions of people converge on shrines in Iraq.

A car bomb exploded near an Iraqi security forces checkpoint on the road between Hilla and Karbala in a mainly Shiite area south of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least one person.

Suicide bombers attacked pilgrims in Baghdad and Karbala last year, killing 171 people, and Ashura could be a flashpoint again this year, especially if the election results fuel tension.

The bodies of two men who worked with Allawi's party were found in a rebellious district of Baghdad on Sunday, police said. In the northwest of the capital, gunmen assassinated two senior Iraqi Army officers and their driver. The Al-Qaeda network in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack.

In the town of Baquba northeast of Baghdad, assailants shot dead a Communist Party member who was also a local councilor.

In Mosul, a rocket attack on the city hall building killed at least two people, hospital officials said.

5.

International

Middle East

News Analysis

POWER CHECK: VERDICT IS SPLIT IN IRAQI ELECTION
By Dexter Filkins

New York Times
February 14, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/international/middleeast/14assess.html

BAGHDAD -- The razor-thin margin apparently captured by the Shiite alliance here in election results announced Sunday seems almost certain to enshrine a weak government that will be unable to push through sweeping changes, like granting Islam a central role in the new Iraqi state.

The verdict handed down by Iraqi voters in the Jan. 30 election appeared to be a divided one, with the Shiite political alliance, backed by the clerical leadership in Najaf, opposed in nearly equal measure by an array of mostly secular minority parties.

According to Iraqi leaders here, the fractured mandate almost certainly heralds a long round of negotiating, in which the Shiite alliance will have to strike deals with parties run by the Kurds and others, most of which are secular and broadly opposed to an enhanced role for Islam or an overbearing Shiite government.

The main responsibility of the Iraqi government over the next 10 months will be the drafting of a permanent constitution, which must pass a vote of the assembly and then be put to a vote of the people later this year. The role of Islam is widely expected to be one of the most contentious issues.

The results of the balloting appeared to leave Kurdish leaders, whose party captured more than a quarter of the assembly seats, in a particularly strong position to shape the next government. The Kurds are America's closest allies in Iraq, and most of their leaders are of a strong secular bent.

Among the demands that the Kurds and other groups will put to Shiite leaders as the price for their cooperation will be an insistence on a more secular state and concessions on Kirkuk, the ethnically divided city that Kurdish leaders want to integrate into their regional government. Kurdish leaders also say they will insist that the Iraqi president be a Kurd.

The prospect of a divided national assembly, split between religious and secular parties, also appeared to signal a continuing role for the American government, which already maintains 150,000 troops here, to help broker disputes.

As the final vote totals were being announced Sunday, Shiite leaders appeared to be scaling back their expectations, and preparing to reach out to parties in the opposition to help them form a new government.

"We have to compromise," said Adnan Ali, a senior leader in the Dawa party, one of the largest in the Shiite coalition, called the United Iraqi Alliance. "Even though we have a majority, we will need other groups to form a government."

The vote tally, which appeared to leave the Shiite alliance with about 140 of the national assembly's 275 seats, fell short of what Shiite leaders had been expecting, and seemed to blunt some of the triumphant talk that could already be heard in some corners. The final results seemed to ease fears among Iraq's Sunni, Kurd and Christian minorities that the leadership of the Shiite majority might feel free to ignore minority concerns, and possibly fall under the sway of powerful clerics, some of whom advocate the establishment of a strict Islamic state.

As a result, some Iraqi leaders predicted Sunday that the Shiite alliance would try to form a "national unity government," containing Kurdish and Sunni leaders, as well as secular Shiites, possibly including the current prime minister, Ayad Allawi. Such a leadership would all but ensure that no decisions would be taken without a broad national consensus.

One senior Iraqi official, a non-Shiite who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the slim majority won by the Shiite alliance signaled even greater obstacles for the Shiite parties in the future. If the Sunni Arabs, who largely boycotted the election, decide to take part in the future, they would almost certainly dilute the Shiite alliance's already thin margin.

"This is the height of the Shiite vote," the Iraqi official said. "The next election assumes Sunni participation, and you will see an entirely different dynamic then."

The main factor ensuring a relatively cautious Shiite majority is the complicated mechanism controlling the formation of the government. Under the rules, the prime minister will be selected by a president and two deputies, who must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the assembly. Practically speaking, that means the prime minister will have to be approved by a two-thirds vote. The Shiite alliance has nowhere near that many seats.

Iraqi leaders who are not part of the Shiite alliance say that in exchange for their support for a Shiite prime minister, they could set strict conditions on several key issues, like the role of religion in the constitution and the power of regional governments.

Under the interim constitution agreed upon last year, Islam is one of many sources of legislation, not the only source, as was advocated by some Shiite leaders.

Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister and a prominent Kurdish leader, reiterated his group's support for a limited role for Islam in the new constitution and broad powers for the Kurds to run their own affairs. He also said the Kurds would insist that Shiite leaders agree to a Kurdish president, probably Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the main Kurdish political parties in the north.

The selection of a Kurdish president would most likely inflame the Sunnis in Iraq as well as nearly all other governments in the Arab world, which are dominated by Sunnis.

"If Talabani were rejected merely because of his ethnicity, then this would be relegating Kurds to the status of second-class citizens," Mr. Salih said. "And this is something that we would not accept."

Indeed, the stage seemed set for several days of intensive negotiations to determine the shape of the next government. With that in mind, Iraq's Shiite leaders sounded a conciliatory tone.

"This is a stage in Iraqi history when everyone must participate," said Haitham al-Husseini, a leader of the Shiite alliance. "We don't want to be the dominating power in the country."

6.

International

Middle East

IRAQI SHIITES WIN, BUT MARGIN IS LESS THAN PROJECTION
By John Burns and James Glanz

New York Times
February 14, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/international/middleeast/14iraq.html

BAGHDAD -- A broad Shiite alliance led by two Iran-backed religious parties won a slim majority of seats in the national assembly, final election results showed Sunday.

The alliance's victory -- in the first fully elected parliament in Iraq's 85-year history as a separate state -- was narrower than the alliance had projected and set the stage for protracted maneuvering.

The 8.5 million people who voted, a turnout of 58 percent, appeared to have spread their choices widely enough to assure that power in the new government, and in the drafting of a new constitution, will have to be broadly shared among the assembly's 275 members, lessening the possibility that a religious Shiite theocracy could emerge from the elections.

Calculations based on the results indicated that while the Shiite alliance had won about 48 percent of the popular vote, it would hold 140 seats, or 2 more than required for a majority. The seat totals have not been certified and are subject to appeal.

Until just before results were announced, alliance officials said they were expecting 150 seats. That number would have brought them closer to the two-thirds majority required to pick a new government and to take the controlling hand in writing a constitution. Instead, heavy Kurdish voting in the north and secular voting in Baghdad and Basra offset the alliance's sweep in most of the southern provinces.

About 75 seats in the new assembly appeared headed for an alliance of Iraq's two main Kurdish parties, which dominated the votes of Iraq's heavily mountainous far north. A party led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who has been interim prime minister, seemed likely to take 40 seats, the largest bloc controlled by any individual leader. Five seats appeared likely to go to Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, the interim president, one of a handful of Sunni leaders who did not boycott the elections, and the only Sunni figure of national standing who appeared to have secured a place in the assembly.

The remaining 15 seats will be scattered among eight other parties. Three seats seemed likely to go to a group loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the volatile Shiite cleric who has twice led uprisings against American troops, and another three seats to a Turkmen party. Two seats each seemed likely to be taken by a vestige of Iraq's old Communist Party and by two moderate Islamic splinter parties, one Kurdish and the other Shiite.

Three other seats, unofficial calculations show, will go to individuals, one of them an Assyrian Christian, one a former American-appointed governor of Nineveh Province and one the leader of a small party called the National Democratic Alliance.

The sweeping victory sought by the main Shiite group, the United Iraqi Alliance, was denied when the group's early lead in returns from Baghdad and the southern provinces shrunk before the heavy Kurdish voting in the north, and the secular vote in big cities for Dr. Allawi. Dr. Allawi took nearly 615,000 votes, more than half his total, in Baghdad and Basra.

But the crosscurrents of Iraqi politics were illustrated by the Shiite alliance's still greater success in Baghdad, the most cosmopolitan city, where it took 60 percent of the 1.9 million votes, many of them in the sprawling Shiite slum of Sadr City.

Needing about 44 more seats to reach a two-thirds majority in the assembly, the Shiite alliance signaled Sunday that it was ready to lead a coalition government of Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis, some of whom could be drawn into the cabinet even if they have no seats in the assembly.

Some alliance leaders even hinted at a national unity government that would include figures like Dr. Allawi, until now considered an apostate by some of the alliance's leaders because of his willingness to appoint veterans of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to senior posts in sensitive ministries like defense, interior and intelligence.

If the alliance's pledge to work with rivals survives the bargaining ahead, it will be a fresh lift for American officials here, who have been working since the Jan. 30 elections to encourage what one senior American diplomat described as the "integrating, rather than the disintegrating," forces in Iraqi politics.

In an interview as the last election returns were being tallied, the diplomat said the Americans were "ready to work with whatever government the Iraqis choose," and were not worried about the alliance's Iranian links. "I think that they're nationalistic Iraqis, and that they didn't go through all those years of struggle against Saddam just to hand their country over to the Iranians."

At its news conference on Sunday, the election commission's officials announced the results of a two-week count that relied on painstaking cross-checking of paper tallies from 5,300 polling stations. They said that with a pool of 14.7 million eligible voters, the country had a turnout exceeding their election-day estimate of 8 million by nearly 500,000 votes. They noted it had been achieved in the face of threats from insurgent leaders to "wash the streets" with the blood of voters, and despite intensive attacks on polling stations and voters across the country.

But the results released Sunday showed that the success in getting out the vote was patchy, at least politically, with province-by-province breakdowns demonstrating that those who voted were overwhelmingly Shiites and Kurds, with Sunnis, the Iraqi minority that traditional held power, largely boycotting the polls.

The sparse participation in four Sunni-majority provinces with nearly seven million Iraqis, a fourth of the country's population, augured poorly for hopes that a significant number of Sunnis might now move toward disavowing the insurgency. Turnouts in the mainly Sunni provinces were as low as 2 percent in Anbar, west of Baghdad, and 17 percent in Nineveh, in the north, where a majority of the votes appeared to have been cast by local minorities of Shiites and Kurds.

In Salahaddin, Mr. Hussein's home province, with a substantial Shiite minority, the turnout was 29 percent; in Diyala Province, with a population about one-third Shiite, it was 33 percent.

By comparison, the turnout in the three mainly Kurdish provinces in the north averaged 85 percent; in nine mainly Shiite southern provinces, the average was 71 percent.

The highest voting in any of the regions that have been critically affected by the insurgency was in Baghdad, a city blanketed by American and Iraqi troops on election day as 51 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.

Concerns about the continuing threat posed by the insurgency were briefly set aside Sunday for celebrations by the Shiites and Kurds, who hailed the vote as a critical step in securing freedoms denied them during decades of Sunni domination. More broadly, the elections' organizers hailed the results as historic not only for Iraq but for the Arab world, where elections have generally been stage-managed to assure the continuity of autocratic regimes.

"Today, Iraq is taking a new step toward the horizon of democracy, a very wide horizon, a step in which the Iraqi people are giving an example for the first time of a true Arab democratic experience," said Fareed Ayar, a spokesman for the election commission, a 59-year-old Kurd from the northern city of Sulaimaniya. He described those who voted as having "closed all the wounds" of Iraq's past, as well as giving their own rebuke to the insurgents.

"They went to the polls standing tall," he said.

A similar note was sounded by Shiite leaders.

"This is the first experience of democracy in our country, and it has been a success," said Haitham al-Husseini, a senior leader in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a principal member of the Shiite alliance. "We need a government that will save the country."

In the north, Kurdish leaders were triumphant, although they continued to insist that as many as 300,000 Kurds might have been disenfranchised by election miscues, including polling stations that never opened or ran out of ballots.

"It was a big success for the entire people of Iraq and for the people of Kurdistan in particular," Massoud Barzani, one of the top two Kurdish leaders, said in an interview in the snow-covered mountain town of Salahuddin, where he appeared in a red-and-white turban and a pale green smock. "It shows the size of the Kurds in Iraq. It also shows that the Kurds can play a major role in the building of a new Iraq that is federal, democratic and pluralistic."

In reaching the official allocation of assembly seats, the election commission will use a complex system of proportional representation that will eliminate all parties that fall short of a threshold -- about 30,750 votes -- required to elect a single member to the assembly. The remaining parties will then get a slightly higher proportion of seats than votes won. It was this provision that appeared to have assured the Shiite alliance its assembly majority, although it fell short of a majority of the votes.

The Shiite coalition, backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, won 48 percent of the vote, against 26 percent for the Kurdistan Alliance, a partnership between Mr. Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party and a rival Kurdish group, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which has said it will push its president, Jalal Talabani, for the post of president in the new government.

Dr. Allawi's party, the Iraqi List, won 14 percent. The remaining 12 percent was scattered among 108 other parties and alliances, none with more than 1.8 percent, the tally posted by Sheik Yawar's group, the Iraqis Party.

The official allocations in the assembly will be made after a three-day period beginning Monday during which the election commission will hear protests on the voting tallies, then issue a final seat breakdown.

That process could last a week or more, and could be followed by more weeks of political horse-trading before the parties put together the two-thirds majority needed to select the new government, beginning with the appointment of a presidency council comprising a president and two vice presidents. That council will pick a prime minister and a cabinet, whose members will need confirmation by a simple majority in the assembly.

Privately, American officials have said they hope to see a new government take office by the end of March, although that date could slip in the absence of any deadline for an agreement among the parties.

The assembly is likely to meet much earlier, possibly late this month or early in March. Apart from selecting the new government, the assembly's main task is the drafting of a new constitution, which must be submitted to a national referendum by Oct. 15, with another election by Dec. 15 to choose an assembly and government to serve for five years.

--Edward Wong contributed reporting from Salahuddin for this article.

7.

Top Worldwide

IRAQ'S ALLAWI, MAHDI MAY GAIN AS SHIA LIST IS SHORT OF MAJORITY
By Caroline Alexander

Bloomberg News
February 14, 2005

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aobM02BL7MUA&refer=top_world_news

Iraq may be run by a coalition government formed around a secular leader such as interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi after a Shiite Muslim coalition failed to win a majority in the National Assembly election.

The United Iraqi Alliance, backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani and known as the Shia List, received 47.6 percent of the votes in the Jan. 30 election, the Independent Electoral Commission said at a news conference in Baghdad yesterday. A two-thirds majority is required to form a government. The Kurdish Alliance came second with 25.4 percent. Allawi's Iraqi List came third with 13.6 percent.

"The Kurds and the Shia have to give more than they take," said James Denselow, an analyst at Chatham House, a foreign-policy consulting group in London that advises European governments, in a telephone interview.

Iraq's first free election in more than 50 years may confirm the position of Allawi, a U.S.-backed Shiite who describes himself as secular, as a compromise to unite religious and ethnic groups, according to analysts including Josh Mandel, head of the Middle East unit at London-based Control Risks Group. The assembly will approve a prime minister by early March.

U.S. Senator Bill Frist, who visited Iraq Jan. 10, said yesterday the fact that the Shiite coalition won less than 50 percent "leaves open the possibility that minority coalitions can come together" to form a government. Frist, the leader of the Senate's Republican majority, was speaking on the "Fox News Sunday" program.

SHARING POWER

There is a tacit agreement that the prime minister will be a Shiite, the president a Kurd and one of two vice presidents a Sunni, according to Yahia Said of the London School of Economics. Kurds and Sunnis won't accept a clerical Shiite, ensuring that Sharia, or Islamic Law, isn't enshrined in the constitution as the primary source of law, he said.

Allawi's strongest challengers for prime minister are Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi and nuclear physicist Hussain Shahristani, both considered to be moderate members of the Shia List by analysts including Robert Blackwill, a former Iraq strategist in the Bush administration and head of global affairs at Washington-based Barbour Griffith & Rogers, a lobbying firm.

"The interim finance minister is a strong contender for the post of prime minister," Said of the London School of Economics said in a telephone interview yesterday. "He is perceived largely as a moderate secular figure that people could agree on."

NEW CONSTITUTION
Of Iraq's 14.2 million registered voters, 8.55 million cast ballots for a 275-seat Transitional National Assembly that will draft a permanent constitution, prepare for general elections at year's end, and elect a presidential cabinet to select the prime minister in the next two weeks. Smaller parties accounted for the balance of votes cast.

This is the first time since Iraq became a nation state in 1932 that the Shiite majority and the Kurdish minority have risen to such prominence in the government.

The Kurds "are in an incredibly strong position," said Denselow of Chatham House.

The Sunni Muslim-dominated Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq for more than three decades before the March 2003 invasion by U.S.-led forces that toppled the dictator. The regime suppressed the Shiites and killed as many as 70,000 Kurds.

Sunnis have dominated the insurgency in Iraq that followed the invasion. Supporters of Hussein who lost their status joined forces with followers of al-Qaeda-linked terrorists to try to foment religious divisions, according to the current Iraqi government, the U.S. military and analysts.

ROLE FOR SUNNIS

"The right-thinking Sunnis have to take back their inheritance," Ali Allawi, a former defense minister in the Iraqi Governing Council and a member of the Shia List, said in a Feb. 4 interview.

Kurds, who are chiefly secular and suspicious of the two main parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa party, will be a counterweight to religious groups participating in the new government, said analysts including Nadim Shehadi of Chatham House in London.

Sunni political groups that shunned the election will be invited to participate in the new government and in drafting the constitution, according to Iraqi politicians including Allawi and Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations.

Sunnis and Kurds each make up 15 percent to 20 percent of the population. Shiites account for about 60 percent.

A total of 7,785 men and women ran in the election, representing 111 political entities, including parties and coalition and individual candidates.

The United Iraqi Alliance will put forward four candidates for the job of prime minister, Ali Allawi said: Mahdi, the interim finance minister; Dawa Party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari; Ahmed Chalabi, once the candidate favored by the U.S.; and Shahristani, the physicist.

--Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net