Ex-CIA man Allawi named Iraq PM

Iyad Allawi, a former supporter of Saddam Hussein who then worked with the CIA to topple him, was chosen as Prime Minister of Iraq on Friday...

Iyad Allawi, a former supporter of Saddam Hussein who then worked with the CIA to topple him, was chosen as Prime Minister of Iraq on Friday. United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, whom Washington had asked to form a new Iraqi government, confirmed the choice of the British-educated neurologist through a spokesman.

He will head an interim government due to take over the country from the US Occupation Authority on June 30. Allawi aide Hani Adris said his fellow members on the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council had nominated him at a meeting in Baghdad on Friday and that Brahimi and US officials in Baghdad endorsed him.‘‘There was a meeting of the Governing Council and Dr. Allawi was unanimously chosen as the Prime Minister,’’ Adris said.

Allawi hails from Iraq’s long oppressed 60 percent Shi’ite majority; a Shi’ite is also expected to head the cabinet. Brahimi is helping select a 30-member team, including a president and 26 ministers. Their prime task will be to organise elections in the following year. Allawi, a wealthy secular Shi’ite and former member of Saddam’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.

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Allawi 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 included many former Baathists who opposed the Baghdad regime.

Meanwhile, five Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded in clashes between US troops and Shi’ite militia around the holy city of Najaf, a day after militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr offered a truce to end two months of fighting. Two US soldiers were also wounded, but US officials played down the incidents and said they were still hopeful of the ceasefire holding

Two Japanese journalists were killed in an attack on their car on Thursday at a well-known danger spot South of Baghdad, said doctors who displayed two incinerated bodies. —(Reuters)

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