Allawi Nominated As Transitional Iraqi PM

8 minutes ago

By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi Governing Council on Friday nominated one of its own members, Iyad Allawi, a Shiite Muslim physician who spent years in exile, to become prime minister of the new government to take power June 30, members said.



The chief U.S. administrator in Iraq (news - web sites), L. Paul Bremer, was at Friday's council session and congratulated Allawi on his nomination, said Mustafa al-Marayati, an aide to council member Raja Habib al-Khuzaai.


The council also planned to nominate a president and two vice presidents. But it was not known whether U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has approved the choices.
~snip~
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=1&u=/ap/20040528/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_prime_minister

Osama Bin Forfotten!

Brahimi's approval and now the council releases a name without, it seems, Brahimi's approval. I smell a turf war here. The council want their people in even though the Iraqi people don't trust them. The US wants "their" people in but Brahimi isn't buying it. This is getting more and more interesting.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3757431.stm

"Mr Allawi - a Shia Muslim - was endorsed unanimously by the Governing Council, member Mahmoud Othman said.

An aide to Mr Allawi said his nomination had been approved by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi - who is charged with putting together a new government."

I wonder if the US also endorses him?

:eyes:

I am soooo confused! I see that there seems to be some connection to the CIA in other posts, could that be one of his "masters"?

I'll keep flipping back and forth between CNNI and BBC and see if I can catch anything else.

He'd better have at least 300 bilgewater mercenaries protecting his sorry ass at AMERICAN TAXPAYER EXPENSE.

He's getting tombstoned.

It's sort of interesting that he wants the job.

I expect they will have a "private ceremony" deep in the bowels
of the Green Zone to install/appoint him.

Since we cannot provide security and have no effective authority
in most of Iraq, it's hard to figure exactly what he will "rule"
over, but since the main purpose of this is as a political fig-leaf
that does not matter.

So this is getting very interesting.

I'll try to find a link and post more.


On edit: Okay, here's something:

"As the CIA was drafting its plans {in 1994}, the British encouraged the agency to contact an experienced Iraqi exile named Ayad Alawi, who headed a network of current and former Iraqi military officers and Baath Party operatives known as Wifaq, the Arabic word for "trust."

<snip>

"Chalabi was so convinced that the military-coup plan had been compromised that he traveled to Washington in March 1996 to see the new CIA director, John Deutch, and his deputy, George Tenet. He told them the Iraqis had captured an Egyptian courier who was carrying an Inmarsat satellite phone to Shawani's sons in Baghdad.

"When the CIA officials seemed unconvinced, Chalabi went to his friend Richard Perle, a prominent neoconservative. Perle is said to have called Tenet and urged that an outside committee review the Iraq situation. But the coup planning went ahead.

"DBACHILLES collapsed in a blood bath in June 1996. The Post had run a front-page story on June 23 describing Alawi's role in "the latest CIA-backed plan" that was based on 'contacts at high levels of the Iraqi military.' "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A61979-2003May15¬Found=true


And here's a story from last December:

"The Bush administration has authorized creation of an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government, according to U.S. government officials.

<snip>

"The new service will be trained, financed and equipped largely by the CIA with help from Jordan. Initially the agency will be headed by Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite and activist in the Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord, an exile group that includes former Baath Party military and intelligence officials.

<snip>

"Badran and Ayad Alawi, leader of the Iraqi National Accord, are spending much of this week at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., to work out the details of the new program. Both men have worked closely with the CIA over the past decade in unsuccessful efforts to incite coups against Saddam. The agency and the two men believe they can effectively screen former regime officials to find agents for the service and weed out those who are unreliable or unsavory, officials said.

"By contrast, some Pentagon officials and Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, vehemently oppose allowing former intelligence and military officials into the new organization for fear they cannot be trusted. Chalabi and his sponsors also fear that some former regime officials would use the new apparatus to undermine the influence of Chalabi, who wants to play a central role in a new Iraq."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/2286920

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=716&e=3&u=/ap...

<snip>During his years in exile, Allawi was the little-known favorite of CIA officers wary of dealing with the flashier, better-known exile leader Ahmad Chalabi. <snip>

that what they are doing is jockying for position when the war starts. Brahimi seems to be the only "honest broker" here. He appears to be trying to come up with a plan and a man that would actually side-step a civil war. The US, I truely believe, wants that civil war - easier to keep killing, easier to keep stealing, easier to lay the blame for things on "others".

On June 30th.

I like dates just as long as they are not on my calendar



Date Shakes
Recipe courtesy Rachael Ray
Show: 30 Minute Meals Episode: Life Simplified
1 cup pitted dates, coarsely chopped
1 quart skim milk
2 pints French vanilla ice cream
1 teaspoon grated fresh nutmeg

For each date shake, place 1/4 cup coarsely chopped pitted dates, a handful, in a blender. Add 1 cup cold skim milk and 2 big scoops of French vanilla ice cream. Grate 1/4 teaspoon of fresh nutmeg into blender and blend date shake until smooth.
(snip)
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_24151,00.html

~snip~
Iraqi National Accord
Leader: Iyad Allawi

The INA was founded in 1990 and consists mainly of former Baath members and military officers opposed to Saddam's rule. The group has had support from the CIA, British intelligence, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The group's leader, Iyad Allawi, is a former Baath party official and is known to have had disagreements with the INC's Chalabi.

The group gets most of its support from central Iraq.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/iraq/issues_analysis/saddam_successors.html

dramatic life events while resident in the UK in the 1970s and 80s: he and his wife were once the subject of a frenzied axe attack while sleeping in their Hampstead, North London home, which the UK press at the time linked to his alleged involvement with MI6 and the CIA, on whose payrolls his former wife's family alleged he had been for the duration of his UK career.

Allawi was a close pal and financial/business partner of disgraced Iraqi banker Sabih Mahmoud Shukri, whose London career in the mid 1970s included being Chief Manager of the St Martins Le Grand, London branch of Arab Bank, a Palestinian financial institution owned/run by the Shoman brothers and founded by their father in the 1930s, headquartered in Amman, Jordan.

Shukri went on to establish the Arab and Morgan Grenfell Finance Company in London, which was run by Tarek Kassem. Later he founded Allied Arab Bank, a partnership with Barclays Bank, UAE ambassador to the UK Mahdi Al Tajir (bagman to the Maktoums and former adviser to Dubai' Shaikh Rashid, who along with Abu Dhabi's Shaikh Zayed, lost a reputed $8 billion in the eventual BCCI collapse), Tarek Kassem and colorful Nigerian frauster Chief W I Folawiyo - via Channel Islands-registered Al Hamdoulilah Financce Foundation and Al Mubarakah Finance Foundation.

Allawi also invested heavily in the latter two offshore companies and reputedly was offered larger partnership shareholdings promising a finaly payout of some $100 million, dependent on the outcome of African business ventures introduced by Folawiyo.

Allied Arab inception involved the taking over of the assets of collapsed former UK bank Johnson Matthey. Allied Arab itself crashed a few years after its grand City of London opening after the Bank of England was alerted to major irregularities involving Nigerian money laundering scams and financing of west African cocaine cartels.

Barclays eventually took it over and Shukri was arrested and charged along with Folawiyo. A series of civil and criminal lawsuits followed in the UK culminating with Shukri fleeing the country before he could be sentenced. Allawi lost all his investment and was harangued by his first wife's family for reckless speculation with their money.

Shukri was convicted. Reports in the UK press when he was first arrested said that police officers raided his mansion Meadow House on Kingston Hill, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, and found a S & M dungeon in the basement, kitted out with sex torture paraphernalia and CCTV equipment linked to video-production studios. Forensic officers also found the remains of pre-pubescent boys buried nearby on land adjacent to the mansion grounds. Shukri managed to evade murder charges after personal intervention by Mahdi al Tajir.

Among his other sidelines was owning a publishing company called The International Who's Who of the Arab World Ltd, which published a directory of that same name in London in 1978.

Iyad Allawi was paid by Shukri for 'editorial services' which were being run by ex-MI6 officer Peter Mansfield (who acted as editorial director) from offices at 39 Queens Gate, Kensington. Also involved in this partnership was Turkish banker Ilhan Nebioglu and UK Tory minister Sir Anthony Berry, who met an untimely death when blown up by the IRA at the Tories' Brighton conferencce in '84. UN Mr Fixit in Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi also sat on Shukri's editorial board and was paid for consultancy services.

Allawi's personal editorial imput into the Shukri's Who's Who directory proved controversial. Using his family links to Chalabi, he provided Mansfield with detailed biographies of over 100 Iraqi military officers, including their personal family histories, career highlights, addresses etc. When the Who's Who first edition was published in 1978/1979, it was widely panned after UK Middle East specialists identified these Iraqi military officers as KGB personnel who were eventually found to have bankrolled the 1979 downfall of the Shah of Iran and the expulsion of the Pahlavi dynasty. The subsequent second edition carried a disclaimer stating the original editorial team had been deliberately duped by Chalabi.

During Allawi's editorial involvement with the International Who's Who of the Arab World, he managed to rack up a torrid affair with two of Shukri's 'personal secretaries': Egyptian born cocaine courier and prostitute Veronique Boulad and a Russian illegal immigrant who used a false UK ID of Catherine Westover.

Westover was a convicted frauster who evaded jail in 1977 for money laundering, theft and racketeering by the fact of her advanced pregnancy. It was always assumed by those who knew her that Allawi may have been the father of the baby girl who was eventually born to her.

However, it eventually emerged that she was the natural daughter of Shukri's Who's Who editor and MI6 officer Peter Mansfield, and at the time of the conception of her baby, was also sexually involved with a protegee of UK Labour Party grandee Michael Foot - an immensely ambitious barrister and Parliamentary hopeful who was clearly destined for great office.

That daughter is nearing her 27th birthday at the moment and has lived under an assumed name in London for many years. This ID was fixed for her after her mother - who had fostered her out soon after birth - was found brutally murdered in London. The 'fixer' is Sherard Cowper Coles, who is the UK's present Ambassador in Riyadh, married to one Bridget Elliot - niece of film actor Denholm Elliot (remember him as the butler Coleman in Trading Places?). Previously Cowper Coles was UK ambassador in Tel Aviv, and before that PPP to Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. He has also served in the UK embassy in Paris and Washington (under Bush 1).

Westover's daughter has managed to evade detailed police investigations into the sources of her offshore-based trust fund which has enabled her to live a charmed life, free of tedious worries such as finding a job or paying bills. However, the physical resemblance to the man who must be her natural father is beyond co-incidence.

Allawi's first wife's family still live in London and have had to go through gruelling lawsuits to recoup some of the money they entrusted to him which he lost in Shukri's disastrous cocaine ventures with Folawiyo.

Don't expect muuch of this to be in the public domain, especially in the BFEE is now trying to promote him as their man in Baghdad.

Chalabi's cousin with ties to the "spooks." Just what we thought. They never give up do they. Pushing the same old rancid poisonous food down the Iraqi's mouths...saying EAT THIS you will LOVE IT. :puke:

Do they LOOK for people like this or are bottom feeders the only pool available? Unbelievable!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1131991,00.html

As the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, was once again forced to defend the justification for going to war, the Iraqi exile group in London which claims to have supplied MI6 with the intelligence about Saddam's 45-minute capability admitted that the information might have been completely untrue.

Nick Theros, the Washington representative of Iyad Allawi, who headed the Iraqi National Accord in exile, said it was raw intelligence from a single source, part of a large amount of information passed on by the INA to MI6.
...
But Mr Theros said the information now seemed to be a "crock of shit". "Clearly we have not found WMD," he said.
...
He said the Iraqi officer who claims to have been the original source of the intelligence had in fact never seen inside the purported chemical weapons crates upon which his 45-minute claim was based.

:eyes:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials said on Friday there is no consensus yet on who will be Iraq (news - web sites)'s new prime minister after an aide to Iyad Allawi, a member of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council, said Allawi had been chosen.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and the U.S.-run occupation authority have not confirmed whether Allawi, who has long-time links to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites), was the choice.

a tad more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=716&e=12&u=/nm/20040528/ts_nm/iraq_premier_dc

"Asked if Allawi was Brahimi's choice, one U.S. official said: "It's not a question of is he Brahimi's choice or not. The question is, who is the person who can do the job and who everyone can agree on ... We're not there"

It is looking less likely the US will get their transition resolution passed by June 30th if they keep screwing with Brahimi, imo.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell declined on Friday to confirm whether Iyad Allawi will be Iraq's new prime minister and said Washington is still waiting to hear from U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on his choice.

An aide to Allawi, a member of the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council with long-standing links to the CIA, said the wealthy secular Shi'ite Muslim had been chosen to be prime minister of an interim government due to take over on June 30.

Asked if he could confirm Allawi would be the new prime minister, Powell told reporters, "We have no position on any candidate at this moment because we are waiting to hear from Ambassador Brahimi and he needs time to complete his work."

~snip~
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5289225

How many days until Iyad Allawi is assassinated?

...or would that, along with the entire war and occupation, be considered in poor taste.

Their exit strategy slogan for anyone the coalition, the council and the UN select:
"He's not Saddam"

Iraqis jokingly call it a government of the nearest and dearest. Though Saddam Hussein and his Tikriti relatives have gone, Iraq's new leaders are doing their bit to keep nepotism alive. Almost a third of the cabinet and US-appointed governing council are related to one or more other members.

· Governing council member Iyad Allawi is brother-in-law of the interior minister, Nouri Badran. He is also a cousin of the trade minister, Ali Allawi

· Besides being a cousin of Iyad Allawi, trade minister Ali Allawi, is a nephew - twice - of governing council member Ahmed Chalabi. He is a nephew on his mother's side, and his father, Abdul-Amir Allawi, is also married to Chalabi's sister

http://www.arabmediawatch.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1058

A story from October 2002:

The Iraqi National Accord was founded in 1990 and is a creation of the CIA, the British MI6 and Jordanian intelligence, on the initiative of Turki ibn Faisal. Former CIA agent Ralph McGehee confirmed that "the INA is heavily sponsored by the United States and under the influence of the CIA" and quoted another Iraqi opposition figure as saying that "it is common knowledge among Iraqi dissidents that the Accord is directly financed by the CIA." The INA is headed by Shi'ite Ayad Alawi.

The INA seeks to bring down Saddam Hussein using former Iraqi officers and top Baghdad officials, while preserving the Iraqi state. They are terrorists, who have claimed responsibility for the bombing of civilian targets, including a Baghdad cinema and newspaper offices. According to INA insiders, these activities were carried out in order to "impress the CIA."

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin103102/chin103102.html

a King or two as well? What the hell kind of government are they planning on establishing?

You acutally are not too far off the neocon/likud/jordanian dream: re-establishing the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq. Especially David Wurmser was/is raving about this.

See "A Clean Break:
A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", a strategy paper for Netanyahu, as proposed by Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser: http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm

I thought Brahimi was going to announce the new office-holders. Then I read "Brahimi and the United Nations (news - web sites) were never meant to appoint the government but help Iraqis identify candidates."

Since when? The whole deal (I thought) was that the US and its Iraqi Gov. Council have no right to appoint anyone for the long term. This smells bad.

Ex Baathist - check
Bank scandals - check
CIA/MI6 connections - check
Weird sex/torture connections - check
Related to Chalabi - check
Terrorism connections - check
Supported WMD fiction - check

I might have forgotten something. Yes, this sounds like someone Bush can work with. But the relationship might be a short one.

related to Chalibi and in a family feud with him at the same time...

to watch the UN do the bidding of the US. Brahimi is not offering Iraqi's a real choice in who governs them. Wouldn't it be wiser to choose someone who has actually lived in Iraq and therefore has a better understanding of what the people need and want instead of some elitist exile? Anything short of direct elections is just a puppet regime. This move is tragic because it will make the UN lose any credibility in the region. What will happen then? All this time I was hoping that the UN would be wiser than our own administration. I am so disappointed.

Iyad Allawi:




Al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi:




Electronic Iraq states the following:

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1530.shtml

<snip>
"In this instance, however, in order to ensure that wrong conclusions are not drawn, Mr. Brahimi confirms that he has met Mr. Hussain el-Shahrestani on a number of occasions," Mr. Fawzi said. "He thinks very highly of him, values his advice, and has not doubt that Mr. Shahrestani could serve his country well in a number of positions in government.

"Mr. Shahrestani, however, has himself clarified that he would prefer to serve his country in other ways."
<snip>

EDIT: EI link and snippet

Tony Soprano ten years on?

May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations' top envoy to Iraq, has accepted the decision of the Iraqi Governing Council that Iyad Allawi will become prime minister of the interim government that will take office on June 30, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

``Mr. Brahimi respects this decision and is ready to work with this person,'' Eckhard told reporters at the UN in New York. ``He is now saying he will sit down with this person and discuss all the other names that have emerged as we consider who the other leaders of the interim government will be.''

The appointment of Allawi, a Shiite Muslim, as prime minister of the majority-Shiite country would put him at the head of an interim government until elections that are planned to be held by the end of January.

Allawi's candidacy was approved at the governing council building in Baghdad, council spokesman Hamid al-Kifai said, speaking by cellular phone from the capital. Brahimi has been in Iraq looking for candidates for the posts of prime minister, president, two vice presidents and 26 heads of ministries.

~snip~
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aeODYxbncQlM&refer=us

behind a wall of brick and barbed wire. Otherwise he won't last very long.

that would be the only way for him to live seeing his colored past? :shrug:

All I see is the US replacing Saddam with another Saddam...checkered, colored, questionable pasts = puppets for the US. That's all they care about...the rest is window dressing and who the hell cares what happens to the people...it's the oil and bases/positioning they want!

This is so true, and strangely, so quickly forgotten with all the smoke and mirrors. This whole business is simply a distraction from the fact that very permanent bases of operation are being built in all of the strategic oil locations in Iraq. This is so monstrous and huge that there is nothing that anybody can do about it.

I just found this link re: this story.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5084420/

CIA-backed exile leader
During his years in exile organizing anti-Saddam opposition, Allawi had support from CIA and State Department officials who were wary of the Defense Department’s favorite, Ahmad Chalabi.

Allawi, a Shiite Muslim neurologist and businessman involved in the opposition since the 1970s, is related to Chalabi, but the two are not regarded as particularly close. He has long been seen as a rival of Chalabi’s, although they worked together in coordinating anti-Saddam exile groups.

This whole thing stinks.

My prediction: Americans will buy into this Con Job of Sovereignty;the Iraqis will not!

Al Sistani will call for a Jihad sometime in July. Al Sadr, if still alive will lead the Uprising.