World

Shiites To Reconsider PM Nomination

April 20, 2006 / 4:08 PM EDT / CBS/AP

The meeting of the Iraqi parliament planned for Thursday was delayed for two days after Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari agreed to allow his Shiite bloc to reconsider his nomination to head the new government.

Acting speaker Adnan Pachachi announced the delay moments before the 275-member assembly was to have convened.

He said the session would be pushed back until Saturday to allow time "to intensify our efforts to overcome the obstacles," created after Sunnis and Kurds rejected al-Jaafari's nomination.

Shiites are to meet Saturday to reconsider their nomination of al-Jaafari, opening the door to replacing him with a candidate acceptable to the Sunnis and Kurds.

"I am confident we will succeed in forming the national unity government that all Iraqis are hoping for," Pachachi said.

President Jalal Talabani said he expected nominees for the three key posts of president, prime minister and parliament speaker and their deputies to be decided by the time parliament meets.

"We are all exerting the utmost efforts, and we are on the verge of reaching the whole package," Talabani said. "We will have very good news on Saturday, news that will please all Iraqis."

In other recent developments:

In violence reported by police Thursday, at least nine people were killed, and two roadside bombs were reported.

Early Thursday, gunmen attacked a Sunni mosque before dawn in the southern Baghdad district of Saidiya, sparking an hour-long clash with mosque guards and residents. There were no casualties, but the walls of the mosque and nearby houses were damaged, police 1st. Lt. Thair Mahmoud said.

A top Cambodian legislator threw his support Thursday behind the idea of sending humanitarian forces to help U.S. troops in Iraq. But Heng Samrin, president of the National Assembly, said he agreed with Prime Minister Hun Sen that sending combat troops to Iraq was out of the question. "After many decades of civil conflict, Cambodia is tired of war," Heng Samrin told reporters outside the lower house of Parliament. "We should avoid sending our forces to a country in the throes of a civil war."

On Wednesday, handwriting experts authenticated Saddam Hussein's signatures on more documents related to a crackdown on Shiites in the 1980s, the chief judge in his trial said Wednesday. Among the documents was apparently an order approving death sentences for 148 Shiites.

Insurgents blew up an empty police station under construction south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Wednesday. Half of the building collapsed in the late-night explosion Tuesday in Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad, a statement said. The building was almost ready to be handed over to the Iraqi police, police Capt. Rasheed al-Samarie said.

Two roadside bombs in Baghdad killed at least two bystanders Wednesday while at least six people died in targeted shootings in the capital. One bomb targeted a police patrol in a western neighborhood, killing one and injuring eleven. The other exploded near a hospital in eastern Baghdad. One person died and four were wounded.

In a southeastern suburb, police discovered five bodies of Iraqis, handcuffed and blindfolded.

Because of the parliament session, Talabani asked Jordan's King Abdullah to put off a reconciliation conference between Iraqi Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish religious leaders, set for Saturday in Amman.

Meanwhile, Al-Jaafari's move represents the first sign that he has abandoned his quest to keep the prime minister's post, only a day after he had repeated his steadfast refusal to step down.

The United States had put strong pressure on the Shiites to resolve the standoff to quickly form a government able to stabilize Iraq amid increasing sectarian violence.

Parliament has met only once since the Dec. 15 election. The assembly convened March 16 and adjourned after members took their oath of office.

Jawad al-Maliki, spokesman for the prime minister's Dawa party, told reporters that "circumstances and updates had occurred" prompting al-Jaafari to refer the nomination back to the alliance "so that it take the appropriate decision."

Al-Maliki said the prime minister was not stepping down but "he is not sticking to this post."

Al-Maliki and another leading Dawa politician, Ali al-Adeeb, have been touted as possible replacements for al-Jaafari.

The largest bloc in parliament, with 130 lawmakers, the Shiite alliance gets to name the prime minister subject to parliament approval.

But the Shiites lack the votes in the 275-member parliament to guarantee their candidate's approval unless they have the backing of the Sunnis and Kurds, whom they need as partners to govern.

The Sunnis and Kurds, however, rejected al-Jaafari, blaming him for the rise in secular tensions in Iraq.

Al-Jaafari won the alliance nomination two months ago by only one vote, relying on support from radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

With the deadlock dragging on, more Shiite lawmakers have shown a willingness to dump him, though they have been reluctant to do so overtly and break the coalition. Al-Jaafari, meanwhile, repeatedly refused to step aside, saying as recently as Wednesday that doing do was "out of the question."

President Bush on Wednesday urged the Iraqis to "step up and form a unity government so that those who went to the polls to vote recognize that a government will be in place to respond to their needs."

Resolution of the prime minister issue could smooth the way for filling other posts, including the national president, two vice presidents, parliament speaker and the two deputy speakers. The Shiites could block Sunni and Kurdish candidates for those positions in retaliation for the standoff over al-Jaafari.

Iraqi leaders are under enormous pressure from the United States and Britain to form a new national unity government to stem the country's slide toward chaos and to enable Washington and London to show political progress to their own electorates becoming ever more skeptical of Iraq policy.

Sectarian tensions have been running high since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra and the reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and clerics that followed.