Ibrahim Jaafari named new Prime Minister of Iraq
Pakistan Times Monitoring Report

BAGHDAD (Iraq): Iraq’s first elected government in half a century finally took shape on Thursday when a former rebel leader took oath as its first Kurdish president and named a top religious Shia as his prime minister.

Jalal Talabani appointed Ibrahim Jaafari as prime minister, ending weeks of political bickering between parties that frustrated Iraqis and the international community alike.

Talabani, 71, vowed to bring reconciliation to a country torn by decades of ethnic tension and totalitarian rule as he took the oath of office at a historic session of parliament.

He was supposed to formally nominate Jaafari during the same ceremony but the parliament session was adjourned right after Talabani finished the Kurdish-language part of his acceptance speech.

This forced Talabani to make an impromptu announcement to appoint the new prime minister, with perplexed MPs already standing up on their feet in a noise-filled room, which angered Jaafari’s partisans.

Acceptance Speech

In his acceptance speech, Talabani proposed an amnesty for insurgents who have attempted to wreck Iraq’s transition to democracy with daily attacks against security forces and civilians.

"We must find a political and peaceful solution with Iraqis who have been led astray by terrorism and grant them an amnesty," said Talabani.

He said insurgents "should be invited to participate in the democratic process and be given the chance to benefit from the acquired freedoms, even if they call for the withdrawal of foreign or occupation forces, as they call them."

But Jaafari was markedly less enthusiastic about the amnesty. "We will deal with each suspect according to the gravity of the crime, but as we announce an amnesty for those who may qualify for it, we will be merciless with those that raped our women in Mosul and killed them as you saw on television," he said referring to a nightly programme on state television showing confessions of alleged insurgents.

Jaafari vowed to swiftly put in place a new government to replace the outgoing prime minister Iyad Allawi.

Four killed by Explosion

An update report says that four children collecting trash were killed on Friday by a homemade bomb in Baghdad, and masked gunmen killed an Iraqi Army officer in a restaurant in Basra, police said.

The children died in the New Baghdad neighborhood in the southeast section of the city, police Capt. Sabah Hamid Al-Fartosi said.

In the city of Najaf, four civilians were injured by a bomb that exploded near a bus station, local police official said.

Also Friday, police in Kirkuk, about 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of Baghdad, said one driver was killed in an attack that set several Turkish oil tankers ablaze the prior night. Six others were wounded.●