This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/world/middleeast/maliki-iraq-.html

The article has changed 9 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 4 Version 5
Iraqi Factions Jockey to Oust Maliki, Citing U.S. Support Challengers Emerge to Replace Divisive Maliki
(about 7 hours 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. BAGHDAD — Iraq officials said Thursday that political leaders had started intensive jockeying to replace Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and create a government that would span the country’s deepening sectarian and ethnic divisions, spurred by what they called encouraging meetings with American officials signaling support for a leadership change.
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 officials said. President Obama implicitly added his voice on Thursday to the call for change, saying any Iraqi leader must be a unifier. He pointedly declined to endorse Mr. Maliki.
They stressed that the discussions were all within the framework of Iraq’s Constitution and the recent elections in the country, which calls for the formation of a new government over the next few weeks. The jockeying began after a recent series of meetings with American officials here in which, according to at least two participants, they saw the first indications that the Americans would like to see a replacement for Mr. Maliki, whose marginalization of non-Shiites since United States forces left Iraq in 2011 has made him a polarizing figure.
The jockeying came as President Obama told a news conference in Washington that the United States was sending up to 300 military advisers to Iraq and may order targeted, precise airstrikes aimed at helping the Iraqi government thwart the advance of extremist Sunni militants, edging the United States back into a conflict Mr. Obama thought he had put behind him. At least three people, who like Mr. Maliki are all members of the Shiite majority, have emerged as possible candidates to take over as prime minister, with more potential nominees in the wings as parties negotiate alliances from the recent elections. Any prospective successor must convince the minority Sunni and Kurd sects that he can hold Iraq together, as well as vanquish a Sunni-led insurgency that has escalated into a crisis threatening to partition the country.
Mr. Obama also repeated his pledge that American combat troops would not join the fighting in Iraq and urged all political leaders in Iraq to form a government that was inclusive of all sects. He declined to answer whether he had lost confidence in Mr. Maliki but was implicitly critical, saying any Iraqi politician who aspires to be prime minister must be a unifier and reject sectarian policies — areas where Mr. Maliki has failed. Moreover, a new leader must assuage the anger of the Sunnis and Kurds, who have used the crisis to present the dominant Shiites with a list of demands to win their support in negotiations to form a parliamentary majority.
“Now it is not the place for the United States to choose Iraq’s leaders,” Mr. Obama said. “It is clear though that only leaders who can govern with an inclusive agenda can truly bring the Iraqi people together and help them through this crisis.” The Kurds want the Iraqi central government to recognize the contested city of Kirkuk, endowed with oil, as part of the autonomous Kurdish territory they have carved out in the north. The Kurds also wants assurances that they can sell the oil without oversight from the central government.
Mr. Obama also suggested Iraqi politicians cannot delay such a decision. “As the prospects of civil war heighten, we see a lot of Iraqi leaders stepping back and saying, let’s solve it politically, but they don’t have a lot of time,” Mr. Obama said. “Right now is the moment where the state of Iraq hangs in the balance.” The Sunnis want to lead at least one security ministry, such as defense or interior, and control some of the other powerful ministries such as education or higher education, both rich in patronage and jobs.
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. So far the only point of near agreement among Iraq’s political factions is that Mr. Maliki, who has been prime minister since 2007 and is in his second term, must go.
“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,” Nabil al-Khashab, a senior political adviser to Osama al-Nujaifi, the former speaker and most prominent of the Sunni leaders, 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. Even some of Mr. Maliki’s former supporters among the Shiites have turned openly hostile.
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. “He doesn’t have the right to a third term,” said Dhiaa al-Asadi, a senior leader of the Ahrar bloc, a party associated with Moktada al-Sadr, the influential Shiite cleric. “We are sure we can remove Mr. Maliki through constitutional means.”
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. The Kurds, too, strongly support a change, said Falah Mustafa, who serves as the foreign minister for the Kurdish autonomous region.
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. It is far from clear, however, whether any of the suggested successors could gather enough votes. The names floated so far — Adel Abdul Mahdi, Ahmed Chalabi and Bayan Jaber — are from the Shiite blocs, which have the largest share of the total seats in the Parliament.
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. Mr. Mahdi came within a vote of winning the prime minister’s job in 2006 and previously served as one of Iraq’s vice presidents. He is viewed as a moderate who has long worked well with the Kurds.
The Americans are urging a unity government, said Mr. Mustafa. Mr. Chalabi is a complex figure who has alternately charmed and infuriated the Americans but has ties both to them and to Iran. His biggest liability could be his uncompromising support for the systematic purge of many Sunnis from government jobs after the American-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party a decade ago. Mr. Chalabi now says he supports terminating the basis for that purge, the so-called de-Baathification law.
“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.” Mr. Jaber, a minister of interior in the transitional Iraqi government and later finance minister, could also face problems — he is alleged to have allowed abuse and torture of prisoners when he was in the Interior Ministry — and it is unclear whether he has much widespread support.
“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. Other names are beginning to surface, and while the Americans are urging quick action it could take weeks, if not months for the factions to reach consensus.
Even followers of the influential Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr, who has sometimes supported Mr. Maliki, have made a public break. “He doesn’t have the right to a third term,” said Dhiaa al-Asadi, a senior leader of the al-Ahrar Party, a Sadrist grouping. “We are sure we can remove Mr. Maliki through constitutional means.” The maneuvering began several days before Mr. Obama’s news conference in Washington on Thursday in which he said that the United States was sending up to 300 military advisers to Iraq and may order targeted, precise airstrikes aimed at helping the Iraqi government thwart the advance of extremist Sunni militants, who have seized parts of northern and western Iraq, including the No. 2 city Mosul and Mr. Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit.
“We know several factions already announced they are against a third term for Maliki,” said Abdulhadi al-Hassani, a Dawa Party leader who supports Mr. Maliki. “We also know that several politicians seek to ally with external powers to put us under pressure, but we know also on the other hand that the Americans will not breach the measures of democracy that they believe in.” The insurgents have also besieged the country’s largest petroleum refinery in Baiji, 130 miles north of Baghdad, a protracted battle in which the Iraqi military said on Thursday it was winning.
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. Mr. Obama’s pledges of military support have edged the United States back into a conflict Mr. Obama thought he had put behind him. However, he was careful not to pledge American combat troops and also set no timetable for military aid.
“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.” Many here believe that the promise of using airstrikes to help save the Iraqi state may be the best leverage the United States can exert for pressuring the fiercely competitive political players here to come together.
The Iraqi Supreme Federal Court certified the results of the election on Tuesday, after which the Iraqi constitution requires that a parliament be formed within 15 days, which then, in effect, chooses the prime minister and other officials. Mr. Obama declined to answer whether he had lost confidence in Mr. Maliki but said any Iraqi politician who aspires to be prime minister must reject sectarian policies — areas where he has previously indicated that Mr. Maliki has been a disappointment.
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. “Now, it is not the place for the United States to choose Iraq’s leaders,” Mr. Obama said. But he also suggested that Iraqi politicians could not delay such a decision. “As the prospects of civil war heighten, we see a lot of Iraqi leaders stepping back and saying, ‘Let’s solve it politically,’ but they don’t have a lot of time,” Mr. Obama said. “Right now is the moment where the state of Iraq hangs in the balance.”
The meetings on Wednesday, coupled with Mr. Obama’s remarks, 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. Senior American officials in Baghdad, including the ambassador, Robert S. Beecroft, and the deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran and Iraq, Brett McGurk, have been encouraging the Iraqi political factions to work together. At least two Iraqi political officials said the Americans were urging the factions to agree on a replacement for Mr. Maliki.
On Thursday, the Iraqi government announced that it would start paying those volunteers what amounts to a living wage, 625,000 Iraqi dinars a month, with another 250,000 dinars in dangerous areas— a total of about $730, roughly half what an Iraqi soldier is paid. “They want to see the back of him,” said an Iraqi official, who met with the Americans this week and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of the talks.
The government also said it was reactivating senior military officers, who were semiretired, and screening them to see if they should be returned to full-time duty, or retired. The order said all of those with the rank of general or above would be retired, a move that would remove many senior Sunni officers from duty, while colonels and below would be screened. Mr. Khashab, who is close to Mr. Nujaifi, said the American position had been made clear to Mr. Nujaifi in a meeting on Wednesday at the American Embassy in Baghdad.
“Brett and the ambassador met with Mr. Nujaifi yesterday, and they were open about this: They do not want Maliki to stay,” Mr. Al-Khashab said.
The maneuvering does not mean that Mr. Maliki, a longtime political operative, is out. But he is now fighting for his political survival.
While on the one hand, Mr. Maliki’s continued refusal to make concessions to Sunni and Kurdish politicians has increasingly isolated him, he still managed to get the largest number of votes in the April 30 elections — although the number is still too small for him to win re-election as prime minister without support from other coalitions.
“We know several factions already announced they are against a third term for Maliki,” said Abdulhadi al-Hassani, a Dawa Party leader who supports Mr. Maliki. “We also know that several politicians who seek to ally with external powers to put us under pressure, but we know also on the other hand that the Americans will not breach the measures of democracy that they believe in.”
Mr. Maliki’s party has 92 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.
His most recent play for support was to offer salaries to the volunteers who are signing up to fight in government-sanctioned militias that are partly under the auspices of the army. With hundreds of thousands of men offering to join the fight, he is effectively reaching out to the Shia street and making it harder for Shia politicians to work against him.
But his decision to mobilize hundreds of thousands of Shiite volunteers has alarmed people in and out of Iraq.
On Thursday, the Iraqi government announced that it would start paying those volunteers what amounts to a living wage, 625,000 Iraqi dinars a month, with another 250,000 dinars in dangerous areas — about $730, roughly half what an Iraqi soldier is paid.