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| Iraqi Political Leaders Maneuvering to Replace Maliki | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| BAGHDAD — Alarmed over the Sunni insurgent mayhem convulsing Iraq, the country’s political leaders are actively jockeying to replace Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Iraqi officials said Thursday. | |
| The political leaders have been encouraged by what they see as newfound American support for replacing Mr. Maliki with someone more acceptable to Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds, as well as to the Shiite majority. | The political leaders have been encouraged by what they see as newfound American support for replacing Mr. Maliki with someone more acceptable to Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds, as well as to the Shiite majority. |
| Over the past two days the American ambassador, Robert S. Beecroft, along with Brett McGurk, the senior State Department official on Iraq and Iran, have met with Usama Nujaifi, the leader of the largest Sunni contingent, United For Reform, and with Ahmad Chalabi, one of the several potential Shiite candidates for prime minister, according to people close to each of those factions, as well as other political figures. | Over the past two days the American ambassador, Robert S. Beecroft, along with Brett McGurk, the senior State Department official on Iraq and Iran, have met with Usama Nujaifi, the leader of the largest Sunni contingent, United For Reform, and with Ahmad Chalabi, one of the several potential Shiite candidates for prime minister, according to people close to each of those factions, as well as other political figures. |
| “Brett and the ambassador met with Mr. Nujaifi yesterday and they were open about this: they do not want Maliki to stay,” Nabil al-Khashab, the senior political adviser to Mr. Nujaifi, said Thursday. | |
| “We will not allow a third term for the prime minister; they must change him if they want things to calm down,” said Mr. Khashab. | “We will not allow a third term for the prime minister; they must change him if they want things to calm down,” said Mr. Khashab. |
| Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, has marginalized other Iraqi groups, pursuing sectarian policies that are widely blamed for the ballooning Sunni insurgency that seized western Anbar province six months ago and over the past few weeks has taken territory in the north, most notably Mosul, Iraq’s No. 2 city, and Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein. | |
| The extremist Sunni fighters are led by members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, allied with the vestiges of loyalists to Mr. Hussein toppled by the American invasion a decade ago. They are now threatening to march on Baghdad and invade the heavily Shiite south. | |
| Mr. McGurk, in an email Thursday, denied that American diplomats were trying to urge political leaders to form a coalition to choose a new prime minister. “That is 100 percent not true,” he said. But the Obama administration has made no secret of its exasperation with Mr. Maliki. | |
| The president of the Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, in a phone call on Wednesday night with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., laid out some of the Kurds’ demands for participation. He expects to meet over the weekend with Mr. Beecroft and Mr. McGurk, said Falah Mustafa, who serves as the foreign minister of the Kurdish autonomous region. Mr. McGurk has been in Baghdad during the current crisis. | |
| The Americans are urging a unity government, said Mr. Mustafa. | |
| “We the Kurds were the only ones who foresaw what was happening, and we shared this with the Americans,” Mr. Mustafa said. “But there were people who did not want to see this reality.” | |
| “The events of the last week and the failure to deal with Anbar and the marginalization of different groups” has changed the minds of the Americans and others, he said. | |
| While Mr. Maliki’s continued refusal to make concessions to Sunni and Kurdish politicians has increasingly isolated him, he was the largest vote-getter in the April 30 elections. Mr. Maliki’s own party has only 92 seats of the 328 seats in parliament; 165 would be required to make a majority that could choose the next prime minister, as well as other top officials. But forming a block that could unseat Mr. Maliki from a third term would require cooperation among many diverse elements. | |
| “Our message,” Mr. McGurk said, “is to move the constitutional process forward; certify the election; convene Parliament; name a speaker, a president, then a P.M. That’s the process, and the sequence.” | |
| The Iraqi Supreme Federal Court certified the results of the election on Tuesday, after which the Iraqi constitution requires that a government be formed and a prime minister chosen within 15 days. | |
| Rumors have been rife lately that the American government was trying to push Mr. Maliki into standing aside in favor of a candidate more favorable to all factions. Publicly, American officials have said no military aid would be forthcoming to Iraq until Mr. Maliki reconciles with other political factions, especially Sunnis. | |
| The meetings on Wednesday suggested the Americans have concluded that Mr. Maliki is unable to reconcile with other factions. His actions and remarks have been increasingly uncompromising, and his decision to mobilize hundreds of thousands of Shiite volunteers has alarmed people in and out of Iraq. |