I won't be blackmailed into giving up, says Iraq premier

Iraq’s Shiite prime minister declared yesterday that he would not be blackmailed into abandoning his bid for a second term.

He spoke as the country’s Kurdish president bowed to Shiite pressure to delay calling parliament into session until a deadlock is resolved over who should lead a unity government.

The inability to agree is threatening to crush American hopes of beginning a troop pull-out this summer as violence continues.

Bombings, mortar blasts and gunfire killed 19 more people throughout the country yesterday, and police reported finding four more bullet-riddled bodies - two of them with their eyes gouged out.

The unrelenting violence has complicated already-snarled negotiations to form a government reflecting Iraq’s main ethnic and religious communities, which the US and its allies hope will stabilise the country so they can start pulling out troops.

Holding a first session of parliament is a required step toward forming a new government.

Fifteen days after the first meeting, parliament is supposed to elect a new president – a job the incumbent, Jalal Talabani, wants to keep. In 15 more days, the parliament is to approve the nominated prime minister and 30 days later must vote on his Cabinet.

Underscoring US concerns over the deteriorating political situation, American Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad held a meeting with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the powerful Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the two dominant parties in the Shiite coalition that won the December 15 parliamentary elections.

The two met at al-Hakim’s Baghdad home to discuss the current political situation concerning the formation of a new government and developments related to Dr al-Jaafari, the alliance’s candidate to head the cabinet.

In an interview published yesterday, Mr Khalilzad said the 2003 ousting of Saddam Hussein had opened a “Pandora’s box” that could see the violence and turmoil now gripping Iraq turn into an all-out regional war if American troops are withdrawn too quickly.

“We have opened the Pandora’s box and the question is, what is the way forward?” Mr Khalilzad said. “The way forward, in my view, is an effort to build bridges across (Iraq’s) communities.”

But narrowing differences among Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds has become an increasingly difficult task in the aftermath of the February 22 bombing that destroyed the golden dome on a Shiite shrine in the mainly Sunni city of Samarra.

The attack set off two weeks of sectarian revenge attacks, mainly targeting Sunni mosques, clerics and neighbourhoods.

Sunni politicians have accused the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, of launching many of the attacks with the blessing of the Shiite-controlled government security apparatus.

That and the simmering feud between Mr Talabani, the Kurdish president, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite prime minister who owed his re-nomination to al-Sadr’s backing, spurred the formation of a coalition determined to block Dr al-Jaafari’s second term.

If Kurds and Sunnis refuse Cabinet posts because of Dr al-Jaafari, it could mark a failure of the US goal of setting up a unity government with support of all ethnic and religious factions.

Washington policy is that such a unity government would inspire sufficient loyalty from all parties to enable it to fight the raging insurgency by itself as American forces began to withdraw.

But Mr Talabani, with the backing of Sunni and some secular political parties, said last week that the opposition coalition members would not join any government led by Dr al-Jaafari.

Dr al-Jaafari declared yesterday he would not be ”blackmailed” into standing aside.

“Dr al-Jaafari will not be subdued by blackmail. Dr al-Jaafari is not violating the constitution. I am not moody, and I am not personalising the constitution,” the prime minister said.