IGC nominates Iyad Allawi to be Iraqi PM

"There was a meeting of the Governing Council and Dr Allawi was unanimously chosen as prime minister," Hani Adris, an aide to Allawi said on Friday.

He added that UN envoy al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi and the US-run occupation authority in Iraq had endorsed that choice.

Other Governing Council sources confirmed they had nominated Allawi, but there was no immediate confirmation from al-Ibrahimi.

But US officials said there is no consensus yet on who will be Iraq's new prime minister. Asked if Allawi was al-Ibrahimi's choice, one US official said: "It's not a question of is he al-Ibrahimi's choice or not. The question is, who is the person who can do the job and who everyone can agree on ... We're not there yet."

The interim government will take over running the country from the United States on 30 June . Al-Ibrahimi is helping select a 30-member team, including a president and 26 ministers.

The premier

Allawi, a wealthy secular Shia Muslim and former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, is a relative of Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favourite who has fallen out with Washington, but the two are not regarded as particularly close.

Chalabi was himself long seen as Washington's likely choice to lead post-Saddam Iraq.

Allawi, a British-educated neurologist, went into exile after turning against Saddam and in 1990 formed the Iraqi National Accord, a party backed by the CIA and British intelligence and including many former Baathists who opposed the Baghdad regime.

Iraqi secret police were sent to assassinate Allawi in London in 1978 when he struck up a relationship with the British secret service, according to the book Saddam Hussein - An American Obsession, by Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn.

The assassins burst into his bedroom and with knives and axes tried to hack him to death, but fled when his father-in-law arrived on the scene, the book said.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3D9396BD-5E93-4AC8-99A9-C6A9C010DD5A.htm

Profile: Iyad Allawi

Iyad Allawi is one of a US-backed clique of secular Iraqi opposition figures who lived in exile until the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.
But as a candidate for the prime ministership, he has the advantage - to paraphrase one commentator - of being equally mistrusted by everyone.

Religious leaders think he is too secular, the US-led coalition now sees him as a critic, for the anti-Saddam opposition he is an ex-Baathist, while ordinary Iraqis say he is a CIA man.

Born in 1945 to a prominent Shia Muslim merchant family, Mr Allawi trained as a neurologist and joined the Baath party underground movement as a young man.

But when the party came to power, he fell out with the rising hard man Saddam Hussein in the early 1970s and was forced to go into exile.

He was badly wounded in an assassination attempt while living in the UK in 1978, believed to have been ordered by Saddam Hussein.

Well-connected

Mr Allawi went on to co-found the Iraqi National Accord (INA) party, which is known for attracting disillusioned former Baathists from the military and security fields.

From its foundation in 1991, with the backing of the US Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence, the group supported the idea of fostering a coup from within the Iraqi army to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but its attempts ended disastrously.

Correspondents say Mr Allawi is well-connected politically in Washington and London, has extensive business dealings and has close relations with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Since joining the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, he has publicly opposed the purging of members of Baath party from government positions.

His work has been focused on running the IGC's security committee, which has been responsible for building up the new Iraqi army, police and intelligence service.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3757923.stm