Iraq: new hope for the end of blasts

The democratic process in Iraq edged another step forward Thursday when the &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/columnists/2002/11/20/39741.html ' target=_blank>Shiite Muslim alliance reached agreement with the Kurds over the appointment of a prime minister. The emergence of Ibrahim al Jaafari, the 57-year-old London doctor, to head Iraq's first democratic government in modern times was the successful result of a complex deal between the United Iraq Alliance, the Shiite political coalition, and the &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/main/2002/03/30/27258.html ' target=_blank>Iraqi Kurds. The question was, would it last? Though the clergy-backed Shiite ticket won 140 of the 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament in the Jan 30 election their victory fell short of the two-thirds majority required to elect a new president and to secure the Shiite choice to lead the government. For that they needed the backing of the Kurds, who came in second in the election, winning 75 seats. After days of negotiations, the two groups cobbled up a political deal in which the Kurds exacted a stiff price. Under the agreement Kurdish leader &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/main/2002/08/14/34528.html ' target=_blank>Jalal Talabani becomes president of Iraq, a largely ceremonial role, and the Kurds get one ministry in the Iraqi cabinet. Over 100,000 Kurds who had been deported from the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk will have the right to return, and -- most important -- once the government is installed talks will begin on redrawing the lines of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq so as to include Kirkuk and its oil wealth, reports the Washington Times. According to the Houston Chronicle, Kurdish politicians in Baghdad were telling reporters that they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government, a suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent jammed with Shiite mourners in the northern city of Mosul. The attack killed 47 people and wounded more than 100, splattering blood and body parts over rows of overturned white plastic chairs. The explosion, in a working-class neighborhood, destroyed a large tent pitched next to a smaller one on a grassy patch in the courtyard of a mosque. Blood was spattered across the grass, car windows were shattered and survivors wailed as corpses were loaded onto the backs of pickup trucks. NR

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