Shia Jaafari 'is New Iraqi Pm'

One of Iraq's leading Shia politicians, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said today he had been officially chosen as Iraq's next interim prime minister.

Mr Jaafari, a 58-year-old former London GP, said he would form a new government within one or two weeks, and officials said the previous interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, had formally resigned.

The new government will be Iraq's first democratically elected one for about 50 years.

Today's development is likely to be cautiously welcomed by many Iraqis, who have expressed exasperation at the delay in creating a new government after the January 30 election, the first national poll since the US-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

News of Mr Jaafari's appointment came after Iraq's new president, the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, was sworn in earlier today.

Mr Talabani and his two vice-presidents, who were all elected yesterday after weeks of sometimes vexed negotiations, are understood to have appointed Mr Jaafari immediately.

Despite the political horse trading it has been clear for some time that Mr Jaafari would emerge as the new prime minister, despite Mr Allawi's attempts to keep his job.

Mr Jaafari, a conservative Shia with strong religious beliefs, leads the Islamic Dawa party, Iraq's first Shia Islamic political party, which is a major player in the dominant United Iraqi Alliance. The UIA holds more than half of the new national assembly's 275 seats.

He also has ties to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shia leader. Mr Jaafari's wife is a distant relative of the cleric.

Mr Jaafari's rise reflects power shifts in Iraq, where both the Shia Arab majority and the Kurdish minority have new influence after decades of brutal oppression under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.

The Shia have a majority of seats in the national assembly, which is located in the green zone in Baghdad, while Kurds form the second largest bloc; Sunni Arabs have disproportionately few seats, largely because many boycotted the elections or stayed at home for fear of attacks at the polls.

Iraq's new prime minister spent more than two decades in exile, mostly in Britain and Iran, helping to lead anti-Saddam opposition forces in his party.

The new administration will be the second interim government since the US-led invasion in March 2003. Once a cabinet is finalised, Mr Jaafari's government will begin working on drafting a permanent constitution. This is supposed to be finished by August 15, before new elections.

Headlines in Iraq's newspapers this morning predicted Mr Jaafari's appointment today but some Iraqis, jaded by two years of conflict, showed little excitement.

"We, as Iraqis, are demanding security first," said Kadim Jassib, a 32-year-old Shia vendor. "This is a very important point, and the other problems will resolve themselves automatically. Then we can ask the coalition troops to withdraw from Iraq."

Like Mr Jaafari, Mr Talabani was a longtime opponent of Saddam. He spent some 40 years opposing the dictator and successive governments in Baghdad, and is the first Kurd to be Iraq's president.

His role will be more ceremonial than the prime minister's, but Mr Talabani, who wants a federal Iraq with Kurds running their own region, will have another platform from which to advance his aims: he leads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which controls the eastern part of the Kurds' self-rule area.

After he was named as president yesterday Mr Talabani urged Iraqi insurgents, who are believed to be mostly Sunni Arabs, to begin talks.

Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a Shia, and the outgoing interim president, Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, were elected vice-presidents.

Saddam and 11 of his top aides were given the chance to watch a tape of yesterday's national assembly session in their prison. All chose to do so, according to Bakhtiar Amin, human rights minister in the outgoing interim government.

The minister said Saddam watched by himself while the others viewed it as a group. "I imagine [Saddam] was upset," Mr Amin said. "He must have realised that the era of his government was over and that there was no way he was returning to office."