Blundering on

A new president and prime minister are in place, but it will be hard convincing Iraqis that they are not US stooges, writes Salah Hemeid

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Sheikh Ghazi Al-Yawar (centre) was named Iraq's new president on Tuesday. To his right stand UN envoy to Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi and Iyad Allawi, Iraq's new prime minister.

After agreeing on a new prime minister and key posts in the government members of the US-appointed Interim Governing Council (IGC) wrangled all week over who should be president. Emboldened by their success in securing the post of prime minister for fellow member Iyad Allawi, the IGC pushed for Ghazi Al-Yawar, another IGC member, as the new president. Their choice did not go down well with Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

Earlier Bremer and Brahimi appeared to have been caught off guard by the IGC when they had to endorse Allawi as the new prime minister. Allawi, a secular Shia with strong ties to the CIA from his time in exile, was chosen from a list of several candidates that included Hussein Al-Shahristani, a Shia nuclear scientist who spent more than a decade in Abu Ghraib prison after refusing to work on Saddam's nuclear weapons project.

Al-Shahristani, not affiliated with any party and who has spent the past year working on humanitarian aid projects, was Brahimi's favourite, but politicians in the IGC were keen to reserve the position for one of their own and refused to support him. They suggested to Brahimi that they would oppose the interim government were Al-Shahristani to be named prime minister. But when the Council proposed Al-Yawar, an Arab Sunni tribal leader, for the presidency they were opposed by Bremer and Brahimi, who favored Adnan Pachachi, another Sunni IGC member and a former Iraqi foreign minister.

Al-Yawar, a US-educated civil engineer, is regarded as a moderate, albeit one more independent and less supportive of American policies than US-backed Pachachi, who represents a more liberal trend in Iraqi politics. Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and an IGC member acknowledged that a majority of the Council backed Al-Yawar against Pachachi because he is "the fittest and the most suitable". In an interview with the Dubai-based television channel Al-Arabiya on Monday, Talabani said Al- Yawar would be the best choice "in maintaining security and order".

Shia Council members Abdul Aziz Al- Hakim and Ibrahim Al-Jaafari gave similar support to Al-Yawar but declined to explain why. Iraqi officials, however, told Al-Ahram Weekly privately that both Kurdish and Shia members of the IGC have expressed concern that Pachachi may have a political agenda that runs counter to their ethnic and sectarian strategies.

When Brahimi finally confirmed the appointment of Al-Yawar as the largely ceremonial head of state on Tuesday he may have broken a deadlock over the appointment of a new Iraqi government, but it would be foolhardy to assume that Iraq's nightmares are over. Brahimi also announced the appointment of Ibrahim Al- Jaafari of the Shia Al-Dawa party and Rowsch Shaways, speaker of parliament in the Kurdish autonomous region of Arbil, as vice presidents.

Bremer's US-run authority intends to hand over formal sovereignty to the interim government on 30 June, although some 150,000 foreign troops -- mostly American -- will stay on in Iraq. Washington asked the United Nations to help form the government as part of a plan it has submitted to the UN Security Council for international endorsement. Under this plan Brahimi is supposed to take a leading role in shaping Iraq's next leadership.

When he arrived in Baghdad last month Brahimi declared that he would crisscross Iraq to give the people a new government, one that he suggested would be more independent of America's heavy-handed ways. The results of his work thus far have been the opposite of what he promised. The leadership now taking shape will be heavy with US-backed politicians, prompting concern among many Iraqis that the new leadership will lack legitimacy.

Many Iraqis have criticized Brahimi's passivity, believing he is caving in on his promises, his task being heavily influenced by the US-led occupation authority and its handpicked IGC members. The appointments, they say, look less a new cast of characters than a reworked version of the same old faces. "This is a carbon copy of the Governing Council,'' said the Sunni Committee of Islamic Ulama (clerics) in a recent public statement.

Meanwhile, violence has been spiralling in Iraqi towns, posing the biggest threat to the US handover plan, which envisages free elections in the New Year. On Monday an explosion rocked Baghdad near the so-called green zone, causing a number of casualties. Much of the country has been badly destabilised by the recent surge in fighting aimed at forcing US troops out. A ceasefire between American forces and loyalists of Shia cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr in Najaf and Kufa collapsed on Saturday only two days after it was announced. It was unclear how many people might have been wounded or killed in fighting as US troops tried to seize insurgent-controlled posts and assert command over the two holy cities.

Back in the US tensions between civilian leaders of the Pentagon, led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and US generals have deepened in the face of the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Army generals who called for troop levels in Iraq far higher than the Pentagon forecast and provided now accuse Rumsfeld and his team of neglecting their commitments to stabilise Iraq after ousting Saddam and failing to anticipate, and later comprehend, an insurgency that threatens the mission with failure. Military efforts have been wasted, they say, by poor planning for the stabilisation phase.

In the face of growing violence, a stagnant economy and political uncertainty, a government without broad support could falter in the tumultuous months after the handover. The dilemma, some Iraqis say, is that the new government could end up looking too much like the old one -- an American-appointed body that never gained the confidence of the people.