U.S. seeking alternatives to Maliki, officials say

BY KAREN DEYOUNG

The Obama administration has been actively seeking alternatives to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as Iraq approaches the formation of a new government following recent parliamentary elections, according to U.S. officials.

When the current crisis began last week, the administration told Maliki in no uncertain terms that time was short for his Shiite-dominated government to reach out to Sunni and Kurdish communities with new offers of political inclusion. Otherwise, officials said, Kurds would likely see the upheaval as an opportunity to form their own state, while at least some Sunnis would likely join with Islamist militants advancing on the capital.

Since then, while Maliki has taken some tentative steps, there has been virtually no substantive movement, officials said.

In recent days, U.S. representatives on the ground in Baghdad — led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk and Ambassador Robert Stephen Beecroft — have consulted with Sunni, Kurdish and Shiites outside Maliki’s governing alliance, to explore the possibility of forming a new government without him.

Although Maliki’s alliance won the most votes in April elections, with 92 out of 328 parliamentary seats, he must build a majority coalition in order to retain control of the government. The Iraqi Supreme Court certified the election results on Monday, starting a timeline for government formation.

The irony of the current crisis, a senior administration official said as the outreach began, is that “there’s an ability to unite the country” in opposition to the militants. “But in order for that to work, more needs to be done to address the legitimate concerns of all communities, including the Sunnis and Kurds. Absent that, their incentives to take part aggressively” in fighting advancing forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria “is much less.”

Maliki’s spokesman Ali al-Musawi said that this is the wrong time to seek Maliki’s removal. For him to step down now “would not only mean chaos, it would be surrender to terrorists,” he said.

There are few if any candidates to lead a new government who could win the support of all parties. Most of the likely contenders, including Osama al-Nujaifi, leader of the largest Sunni political group; Sunni politician Ayad Allawi, who headed a multi-ethnic coalition in the last election; and Shiite Ahmed Chalabi, are all well-known and well-worn figures on the Iraqi political stage and likely to be unacceptable to one or more groups.

Some of Iraq’s neighbors, meanwhile, including the Sunni monarchy in Saudi Arabia, have been pushing for the formation of an interim coalition government as the fastest way to remove Maliki and push sectarian disagreements over who should rule down the road.