US struggles to keep Iraqi leader at helm

US struggles to keep Iraqi leader at helm
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | August 21, 2007


WASHINGTON -- US officials in Baghdad and Washington, under pressure to show political progress in Iraq to an increasingly skeptical Congress, are scrambling to shore up support for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose shaky coalition government has been on the verge of collapse since a rash of Cabinet defections earlier this month, analysts and government officials said yesterday.

At least three separate attempts to unseat Maliki are unfolding in Baghdad -- two from within his own Shi'ite coalition. Nearly half of the ministers in his Cabinet have resigned or are boycotting official meetings. The defections have so thinned the ranks of his supporters that some analysts say that Maliki might not be able to survive a vote of no confidence in the Iraqi parliament, if such a vote were called.

"My view is that his government is in essential collapse," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress.

In recent weeks, the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and a top White House aide, Meghan O'Sullivan, have held a series of intense, behind-the-scenes meetings with Iraqi politicians. Their goal is to build enough support for Maliki to maintain control of a majority of seats in parliament and push through key pieces of legislation, including a law to regulate the sharing of oil profits and provisions to allow more Sunni Ba'athists to return to government service.

Those two laws are among the 18 benchmarks by which the US Congress will measure progress in Iraq.

Bush administration officials in Baghdad and Washington warned yesterday that unseating Maliki -- which would usher in Iraq's fourth prime minister in five years -- would not help the country.


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Maliki is a disaster, he needs to go now.