World

Rice: Iraqis Must End Power Vacuum

April 3, 2006 / 10:51 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that the next Iraqi prime minister must be a "strong leader" capable of unifying the people of this fractured country.

Rice made the remarks at a press conference on the second day of a visit to Iraq with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw — a visit aimed at pressing the Iraqis to complete formation of a national unity government following the Dec. 15 election.

Both Rice and Straw emphasized that it was up to the Iraqis to decide on their new prime minister. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the nominee of the Shiite bloc, has been widely criticized by Sunni and Kurdish politicians whom the Shiites need as partners to govern.

"It is not my responsibility to determine who is going to be the prime minister of Iraq," Rice said. "That can only be determined by the Iraqis."

But she said the next prime minister "needs to be a strong leader, who's a unifying force, and someone who can bring stability and face the challenges of the Iraqi people."

Rice said the Iraqi people and the international community "need to see that process of government formation come to an end."

Straw and Rice both acknowledged that the Iraqis had made progress in building a democratic system after decades of Saddam Hussein's tyranny, economic sanctions and conflict.

"It is now crucial that they move forward quickly to ensure the nominations of the senior positions, have those agreed and then agree the Cabinet because there is frankly no doubt that the political vacuum that is here at the moment is not assisting the security situation and the county has got to be able to move forward," Straw said.

"We have emphasized, Secretary Rice and myself, time and again that who becomes nominated and elected ...including the prime minister is a matter of sovereign decisions by the sovereign parliament."

But he added "somebody has to fill these positions and fill them quickly and we've urged those we have been speaking to to do so."

Both Rice and Straw spoke of the need for the next government to curb the power of sectarian militias alleged to have been behind the wave of reprisal killings of Shiites and Sunnis.

"You have to have the state with a monopoly of power," Rice said. "We have sent very strong messages" that there must be "a reining in of militias."

Meanwhile, a Shiite politician says Iraq's current prime minister can speed things up by stepping aside — and become "a national hero" in the process. It was the first time a Shiite figure has issued such a public call.

Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw arrived in Iraq Sunday.

Britain is Washington's closest ally in the 3-year-old war and stations the most troops in the country after the United States.

In other developments:

Two car bombs exploded in Baghdad on Monday, killing a bystander and wounding half a dozen others. The car bombings happened early Monday, one in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City slum, the other in the central district of Karradah, both mostly Shiite areas. The Sadr City explosion killed at least one civilian and wounded four others, and two were wounded in Karradah. The targets were not known, police said.

Gunmen shot down six people, including a child, in a market area of the southern city of Basra, police said. The victims included a navy officer, two policemen, two workers at an electrical plant, and the boy, police said.

In Baghdad's Dora district, four gunmen charged into a Shiite home late Sunday, lined up a brother, two sisters, and an uncle against a wall and shot them dead, police said. The father of the family, a grocery shop owner, had been killed six months earlier by gunmen in the same neighborhood, one of Baghdad's most dangerous. The mother was visiting relatives when the Sunday attack occurred, police said.

Also in Dora, drive-by shooters killed a police captain outside his home late Sunday, police said.

Bombings in Buhriz damaged several buildings including a barber shop and grocery store in a market district of the town, which is a former Saddam stronghold about 35 mile) northeast of Baghdad, police said.

Police discovered two corpses in eastern Baghdad — one in Mashtal that was handcuffed and shot in the head, another in Baladiyat that was strangled and covered with bandages.

In the north of the country, the regional government of Kurdistan released the Kurdish writer Kamal Karim just a week after he received an 18-month sentence for articles on a Kurdish Web site that accused one of the region's top leaders of corruption, said Mohamed Khoshnaw, a government spokesman. The prime minister of the Kurdish regional government issued a pardon for Karim, citing international pressure to release the writer.

Former hostage Jill Carroll arrived in Boston on Sunday. The Christian Science Monitor reporter was held captive for 82 days in Iraq.

The bodies of two Apache helicopter pilots that crashed southwest of Baghdad were recovered, the military said. Officials believe the helicopter was shot down.

There's word that a series of new criminal charges may soon be filed against ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. An Iraqi government prosecutor says the charges would stem from the deaths and deportations of thousands of Kurds in the 1980s. The criminal complaint would also cover Saddam's alleged role in "Operation Anfal," which included the 1988 gassing of about five-thousand Kurdish civilians.