Top Shiite leaders were yesterday deciding the fate of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari as sectarian tension loomed large in Iraq after dozens of Shiites died in bombings this week.
Leaders of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the largest parliamentary bloc in the country, began a meeting to resolve the political impasse involving Jaafari's candidacy as the next premier, a source close to the political negotiations said.
He said the meeting was called after Iraq's revered Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani wrote a letter to the alliance asking the leaders to keep the alliance united.
PHOTO: AP
Sistani did not air any opinion on Jaafari in the letter, the source added.
Jaafari has been facing immense pressure from members within the alliance as well as the Kurdish, Sunni and the secular political factions to withdraw his candidacy.
They accuse him of failing to stop the sectarian killings that have left hundreds dead in recent weeks.
Jaafari has refused to step aside, but was ready to decide his candidature on the floor of the parliament.
"I will stick to the result of the democratic process and reject any bargaining over it," he told journalists recently, adding "if parliament asks me to withdraw then I will."
Jaafari's nomination has been the chief obstacle to efforts to form a unity government nearly four months after landmark elections to choose the first full-term post-Saddam Hussein parliament.
Yesterday's meeting comes as Iraq once again reels in the face of a fresh outbreak of sectarian killings after dozens of Shiites are killed in a series of bombings this week.
A suicide car bomber killed six Shiite pilgrims on Saturday, a day after three suicide bombers tore through a Baghdad Shiite mosque killing 79 worshippers after Friday prayers.
On Thursday, a car bomb attack in Shiite Islam's holiest city of Najaf killed another ten people.
The gruesome attacks on Iraq's dominant conservative Shiite community have heightened fears that the country was disintegrating into a civil war along religious and ethnic lines.
Iraq's Deputy Interior Minister Hussein Ali Kamal on Saturday accepted that Iraq was caught in an "undeclared civil war for the past 12 months."
"On a daily basis Shia, Sunni, Kurds and Christians are being killed and the only undeclared thing is that a civil war has not been officially announced by the parties involved," he told BBC's Arabic service.
His view was supported by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Speaking to the Dubai-based al-Arabiya television, Mubarak said if US-led forces left Iraq "it would be a catastrophe because the war will get worse and Iran and others will interfere and the country will become the theater of an ugly civil war and terror will eat up not only Iraq but the entire region."
Amid fears of Shiite-Sunni clashes, powerful Shiite leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim on Saturday called upon the country's once elite Sunni Arabs to help "unify" Iraq.
"The Sunni brothers are our political partners and we need to co-exist with them and form a government as soon as possible," Hakim said in an address to thousands of Shiites in Baghdad.
Hakim heads the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the key party in the UIA.
The latest violence also came as the US and Britain pushed Iraq's political leaders to form a national unity government as soon as possible.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
ON THE LAM: The Brazilian Supreme Court said that the former president tried to burn his ankle monitor off as part of an attempt to orchestrate his escape from Brazil Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — under house arrest while he appeals a conviction for a foiled coup attempt — was taken into custody on Saturday after the Brazilian Supreme Court deemed him a high flight risk. The court said the far-right firebrand — who was sentenced to 27 years in prison over a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections — had attempted to disable his ankle monitor to flee. Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said Bolsonaro’s detention was a preventive measure as final appeals play out. In a video made
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
SHOW OF FORCE: The US has held nine multilateral drills near Guam in the past four months, which Australia said was important to deter coercion in the region Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows. Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict. “If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an
RSS