IRAQ: Rice and Straw fly to Baghdad in a dramatic bid to break a deadlock over forming a unity government in Iraq.

Record ID: 335787

  • Title: IRAQ: Rice and Straw fly to Baghdad in a dramatic bid to break a deadlock over forming a unity government in Iraq.
  • Date: 4th April 2006
  • Summary: WIDE OF RICE/STRAW IN MEETING WITH SUNNI LEADERS
  • Embargoed: 19th April 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAGNLNDNCERQ6T5KJ8OLZXTDWX
  • Story Text: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Britain's Jack Straw flew to Baghdad on Sunday (April 2) and pressed Iraqi politicians to break their deadlock and form a unity government that can halt a slide to civil war.
    Pressure on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari looked almost irresistible as a leader of the biggest party in his ruling Shi'ite Alliance joined others in publicly breaking ranks and calling on him to step aside in the name of national consensus.
    Though they refused to say so in public, it was a message which appeared to have been conveyed, too, by Rice and Foreign Secretary Straw.
    There has been a delay of nearly four months in forming an Iraqi government since elections.
    Minority Sunni and Kurdish leaders insist they will not join a cabinet under Jaafari and want a different Shi'ite nominee.
    At stake is the future of an Iraq that Rice said remained "vulnerable" to sectarian civil war three years after the U.S. and British invasion. .
    The chill was palpable when Rice and the embattled Jaafari exchanged small talk on a rainstorm raging outside as reporters looked on. The smiles were frosty, the body language awkward.
    No breakthrough is likely to be announced during the two-day trip, officials said -- both Iraqi leaders and their visitors are anxious not to give the impression that Washington and London are imposing a new leader over the elected Jaafari.
    SCIRI, under Alliance leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, had kept up a solid front in public behind Jaafari since, with support from Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, he beat SCIRI's candidate by a single vote in an internal ballot in February.
    But privately the party has been looking for ways to oust Jaafari without breaking up the Alliance, created under guidance from the top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
    Rice met Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, the losing SCIRI candidate in February and a possible replacement for Jaafari. "It's wonderful to see you," Rice said, the tone clearly warm.
    Jaafari has condemned U.S. "interference" in Iraq's new democracy and an aide said he was ready to fight "to the end".
    But his days in office look numbered. For the first time, a leader of the biggest party in the Alliance bloc that nominated him to a second term said publicly he should go. "Today I called on Jaafari to step down and abandon the nomination for many considerations especially that the political atmosphere is facing a big crisis and there is a lot of blood being spilled in Iraqi street," Jalal al-Deen al-Saghir said.
    Privately, U.S. and British officials make little secret of their misgivings about Jaafari, a soft-spoken Islamist physician, long exiled in London and backed by Iran.
    In talks with President Jalal Talabani, Rice and Straw said they hoped to see a prime minister who could unite Iraqis and said Jaafari did not fit the bill, Iraqi political sources said.
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