Shi'ite Jaafari front-runner for Iraqi PM

An Islamist Shi'ite politician and former exile emerged as the front-runner to become Iraq's new prime minister yesterday as horse-trading to decide the line-up of the next government entered the final stages.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a physician and father of five, is head of the Dawa Party, one of two leading religious parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shi'ite-led group which won 48 per cent of the vote in elections on January 30.

"The competition is still fierce but it appears so far that (Mr) Jaafari will be the United Iraqi Alliance candidate because Dawa is insisting on him," a senior Shi'ite source told Reuters.

The diplomatic and soft-spoken 58-year-old, who holds the largely ceremonial role of vice president in the current interim government, fled Iraq in 1980 after thousands of Dawa members were murdered by Saddam Hussein. His family remains in London.

While the alliance did not win the 60 per cent it hoped for, the vote puts the coalition in a commanding position to take the top job in the next government.

A two-thirds majority is needed in the newly elected National Assembly to form a government.

Shi'ites, long oppressed under Saddam Hussein, have gained unprecedented power while minority Sunni Muslims, once privileged under the former Iraqi leader, have been marginalised after boycotting the polls due to fears of violence.

Shi'ite leaders have said the frustrated Sunnis would play a role in postwar Iraqi politics.

"There are two main things that must happen to ensure the continuity of the political process. First, there should be a clear vision and insistence that all Iraqi factions take part in the political process with deeds, not only words," said Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite.

"Second is to have a dialogue, a real one, for writing the constitution. If we manage to make this balance then this is the fruit we will get from the elections," he told Reuters in an interview at his headquarters in Baghdad yesterday.

The Shi'ite alliance, formed with the backing of top Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is headed by Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), both of which opposed Saddam Hussein from exile in Iran.