Accord on Iraqi Premier Is Close

An outspoken Shiite lawmaker secured his coalition’s support and appeared to win over a broader political spectrum as well Friday, key steps toward becoming prime minister in a new government that must confront a growing sense of drift and chaos on the streets.

Jawad Maliki is a close ally of the incumbent interim prime minister, Ibrahim Jafari, but Iraqi politicians said his tough, direct manner and the perception that he’s a competent enforcer makes him more acceptable to Sunnis and Kurds.

Maliki, 56, who played a key role in drafting Iraq’s constitution last year, said in a brief telephone interview that he was humbled by the tasks that may lie before him as leader of Iraq’s first permanent government since 2003.

“It’s going to be a lot of responsibility if it happens,” Maliki said. “I just want to serve my country and help the helpless people.”

The failure to form a government more than four months after Dec. 15 parliamentary elections has stalled reconstruction projects, delayed legislation aimed at curbing the growth of armed groups and fed a growing sense of lawlessness.

Relieved U.S. and Iraqi officials, exhausted after weeks of negotiations over the government, hailed Maliki’s expected elevation as a significant breakthrough, even though fractious discussions over the leadership of the security services remained.

“A major step has been taken with regard to the formation of a government of national unity, which already has a program agreement on a process for decision-making and new institutions,” U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in an interview. “It’s a significant step ... in the right direction, but there will be difficult days ahead.”

Jafari’s bid to retain his post collapsed amid opposition by Kurds, Sunni Muslims and a secular list led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, as well as skepticism by the U.S. and others in the international community. Opposition by Shiite Muslim political leaders and clerics finally persuaded him to halt his efforts to remain in power. He agreed Thursday to reopen talks within his Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance.

In a televised news conference, Humam Hamoodi, one of the alliance leaders, said Maliki had received the nomination after securing the votes from the leaders of six of seven groups within the coalition, which holds 130 of the 275 seats in the Council of Representatives.

The legislature is scheduled to convene today to discuss the formation of a government. Hamoodi said Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis would meet beforehand to discuss other key posts, including the renomination of Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, as president and the probable naming of Sunni Arab legislator Mahmoud Mashadani as speaker of parliament.

Hamoodi said Shiite leaders had canvassed Sunnis and Kurds about Maliki and won their acceptance. Maliki said he’d already spoken to leaders of other blocs, who told him he had their support.

“The Kurds called me, and they say they have no objection,” he told The Times. “I called the Sunnis, and they said they have no objection and they will fully cooperate. Allawi’s list also supports me.”

Jafari, who has served as interim prime minister since last year, narrowly defeated a rival in a February vote to be renamed the Shiite nominee for premier, but failed to gain broader support.

Jafari’s opponents accused him of being too weak in his management ability and too sectarian in his outlook to lead a country plagued by an explosion of inter-communal violence and a Sunni Arab-led insurgency.

“We know Jawad Maliki well,” said Iyad Samarai, a leader of the main Sunni political bloc. “We know his opinions and views well, and we think that he can do the job in a better way” than Jafari.

Saadi Barzanchi, a member of the Kurdish coalition, called Maliki more “open” in his public demeanor and a stricter administrator.

“We think Jafari was not successful in his performance as a prime minister in the last year and during the period after December’s election,” he said. “Security, economy and services are deteriorating.”

Khalilzad said he’d had long chats with Maliki and had been “encouraged” by his softening on issues such as keeping former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party out of the government, which many criticize as a cover for purging Sunnis.

“I hope that he rises to the occasion. I expect that he will,” Khalilzad said in a telephone interview. “As prime minister, he’s a national leader. I said to him, ‘The challenge is to unify the country.’ ”

Maliki, a longtime Shiite Islamist, spent the years of Hussein’s rule exiled in Iran and Syria. He has publicly accused Sunni politicians of being in league with insurgents and forcefully condemned any suggestion that the government negotiate with rebel Sunni Arab groups.

He has relished his role as a vocal proponent of de-Baathification. Mishaan Jaburi, a Sunni legislator facing corruption charges who has endorsed reconciliation with Baathists, once accused Maliki of threatening to dispatch a team of assassins against him.

In terms of ideology and personal history, Maliki and Jafari appear to be carbon copies. Both men are in their 50s and hail from the Shiite shrine city of Karbala. Both were idealistic and devout Shiite opponents of Iraq’s Sunni Arab rulers and the Baath Party. They became underground members of the Islamic Dawa Party. Both fled into exile in Iran after Hussein came to power.

They spent their years abroad as spokesmen for the Dawa Party, once considered a radical group that claimed responsibility for bombings and assassinations against Hussein’s government. The two became prominent figures in exile communities from London to Damascus, Syria, as they plotted against Hussein.

Both quickly rose to power in the initial months after the U.S.-led invasion three years ago.

Jafari became one of 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council handpicked by Americans, and last year Iraqi legislators elected him prime minister in the transitional government, while Maliki was his trusted and vocal deputy.

He was among those who helped hammer out the details of Iraqi sovereignty in 2004 with then-U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III. He was a fiery figure during negotiations over the constitution, dismissing Sunni concerns about a charter that redefined Iraq’s relationship with the Arab world and its Sunni-dominated past.

Jafari, a physician and theologian, agreed to step down only after he was confronted with intense domestic and international pressure. Among several preconditions, he demanded that his successor be a member of the Dawa Party.

“Jafari’s agreement wasn’t without a price,” said the aide to one high-level Shiite legislator. “Otherwise the floor might have been opened and another candidate might have been chosen.”

Maliki holds a master’s degree in Arabic language studies and worked in the Iraqi Education Ministry. He became a member of the Dawa Party in his youth and fled to Iran in 1980, moving to Syria in 1987, where he remained until the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. He has three daughters and two sons.

In person, he is soft-spoken and even-tempered, working prayer beads as he contemplates questions, his eyes shaded by tinted sunglasses. A frequent talking head on Iraqi and Arab television, he has often been at the forefront of an increasing move among the country’s Shiite majority against the U.S. military presence.

After a U.S.-backed raid last month on a Shiite house of worship allegedly used to torture and hold kidnapping victims in northern Baghdad, Maliki condemned the U.S. and called for an investigation. In an interview with The Times in February, he accused those who opposed Jafari of acting as dupes for Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador.

Meanwhile on Friday, violence in the country continued. In Iraq’s far northeastern corner, Iranian planes and rockets targeted rebel Kurdish positions, Kurdish officials said. The Kurdish Firat News Agency reported that three guerrillas were killed.

Several separatist Kurdish groups who oppose the treatment of Kurds in Turkey and Iran have set up bases in the rugged mountain area.

Mostafa Said Qader, a Kurdish official in Sulaymaniya, said Iranian forces massed at the border had launched Katyusha missiles and airstrikes on an outpost of one of the Kurdish groups.

In Baghdad, police found seven bodies of men shot in the head, execution style. Shiite militias have been blamed in many similar slayings. Roadside bombs near the capital’s Yarmouk Hospital injured 11. Two roadside bombs targeting police and army patrols in Mosul killed five Iraqis and injured four, said an Iraqi police officer in the northern city.

The U.S. military reported the death of a Marine in fighting in Al Anbar province, west of Baghdad.

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Times staff writers Zainab Hussein, Saif Hameed and Saif Rasheed and special correspondents in Mosul and Sulaymaniya contributed to this report.