Friday 28 May 2004, 18:57 Makka Time, 15:57 GMT
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The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council has nominted council member Iyad Allawi, who has long-time links to the CIA, to be prime minister in Iraq's interim government.
"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.
Al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi has 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
Chalabi was himself long seen as Washington's likely choice to lead post-Saddam Iraq.
endorsed the PM choice