Governing Council, Brahimi at odds over prospective president

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. officials and a U.N. envoy were unable to reach consensus with Iraqi leaders Saturday over the selection of an interim president, with many members of the country’s Governing Council opposing the U.S. and U.N. choice, according to Iraqi politicians and international officials involved in the process.

The United States and the United Nations want the presidency to go to Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni Muslim who served as foreign minister in the 1960s, before ousted president Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party came to power.

Pachachi, who had lived in exile, has been one of the White House’s favorite Iraqi politicians because of his moderate, pro-Western outlook.

But a majority of the Governing Council opted to back Ghazi Yawar, a Sunni tribal sheik who holds the council’s rotating presidency, Iraqi politicians said. Yawar, a U.S.-educated engineer, is a political moderate who also lived in exile, but he is regarded by council members as more independent and less supportive of U.S. policies.

In an attempt to resolve the impasse, Iraqi politicians met into Saturday night with the three men charged with shaping the interim government: U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, U.S. administrator Paul Bremer and White House envoy Robert Blackwill.

The council’s demand to have Yawar become president illustrated the power the U.S.-appointed body is wielding in the process of selecting an interim government. Although Brahimi and Bremer wanted the council’s role to be limited, largely because it has little public support, members have maneuvered over the past week to give themselves a decisive role in the selection of national leaders who will assume power on June 30, when the United States hands over limited authority.

The council, which is dominated by Iraqis who lived in exile during the Hussein era, scuttled Brahimi’s preferred candidate for prime minister, a politically independent Shiite Muslim nuclear scientist, and insisted that the job be filled by a political leader.

On Friday, the council selected Ayad Allawi, a formerly exiled Shiite politician whose party was supported by the CIA, to become the country’s interim prime minister. Faced with no other option, Brahimi endorsed Allawi, a U.N. official said.

The U.N. official said Allawi’s backing from fellow council members was the result of his own politicking and the subsequent support of Bremer and Blackwill, who believed he would be supportive of U.S. policies.