The appointment of Iyad Allawi as Iraq's interim Prime Minister this weekend was being seen as an American-backed coup which wrong-footed Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy supposed to be putting together the interim government which will wield "sovereignty" after 30 June.
The more that is learnt, however, about the sudden emergence of Mr Allawi, a man close to the CIA and MI6, the more it appears the appointment of the new government has been hijacked by the ambitious politicians of the Iraqi Governing Council - the very body it was meant to replace. The only question is whom the IGC was conspiring with as its members picked jobs for themselves.
But whatever the answer, the appointment of Mr Allawi is the culmination of a series of spectacular U-turns that has given President George Bush and his administration the appearance of lurching in a panic from one flawed policy on Iraq to the next. Since last November every decision seems to have been taken with an eye to one political event alone: Mr Bush's bid for re-election this November.
Originally, it was Ahmad Chalabi the Americans - and in particular Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon - appeared to be grooming as their future tame man in Baghdad, but in recent weeks Mr Chalabi has fallen from grace in Washington. He has now been accused of deliberately duping the US and Britain into war with false intelligence about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction; some even allege he did at the behest of Iranian intelligence.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=526332
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