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Top Shiites Nominate A Premier For Iraq
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"The danger to Iraq lies in the possibility of the U.S. administration making mistakes in its supervision of this crisis," he said in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper al-Nahar in December 2002 that was translated by the U.S. government's Open Source Center. "Those who will rule Iraq after Saddam Hussein cannot be envied. Don't fight for ruling an Iraq full of widows and orphans and burdened with heavy debt."
After Hussein fell, Maliki and the Dawa party quickly claimed a powerful role in Iraqi politics. Like many Shiites, Maliki supported the removal of Baathists from the government. In 2004, he served as a mediator in talks between U.S. representatives and Sadr, a popular leader who led a Shiite uprising.
Maliki also served as deputy chairman of the committee that wrote the Iraqi constitution. He has argued against splitting Iraq along ethnic and sectarian lines -- a stance that could lead to conflict not only with the Kurds in the north, who have governed their own region for years, but with Shiite parties that favor establishing their own mini-state in the south.
Maliki will also have to deal with a shaken society in which the fear of violence has almost become routine. A U.S. Marine was killed in combat west of Baghdad on Friday, military authorities reported, and more than a dozen Iraqis were killed in bombings and shootings, according to police officials and news reports.
If Maliki is approved, he will have a month to form his cabinet. The interior, defense and oil ministries, responsible for the police, the army and the economy respectively, are likely to require the same painstaking negotiations that the choice of prime minister required.
"Of course there will be some difficult issues to deal with in the coming weeks, particularly the security ministers," Khalilzad said in a telephone interview. "But we had to have this. It's been a good day."
Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi, Naseer Nouri and Bassam Sebti in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
