Allawi's political future tenuous

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The victors in last month's parliamentary elections indicated Monday that they were prepared to cut a secular politician favored by the U.S. out of the new government in favor of Iraq's main Sunni Arab party.

The pro-Western politician, former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, did poorly in the Dec. 15 voting despite a sleek television campaign.

"Allawi is a red line," said Baha Araji, a member of the leading Shiite Muslim political bloc and a loyalist of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Araji and other negotiators from the main Shiite slate spent much of Monday night engaged in talks with the National Accordance Front, a Sunni Arab coalition led by Islamists and clerics. The president of the northern Kurdish region of Iraq, Massoud Barzani, embraced Sunni Arab leaders there.

The emerging political alliances put Shiites, Kurds and Islamist Sunni Arabs on one side, excluding secular Iraqis, hard-core Sunni Arab nationalists and those sympathetic to Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

Sunnis are a minority in Iraq, but they dominated it for decades and now make up most of the insurgents. They boycotted elections in early 2005, but turned out in full force in December. According to preliminary results, they won about 20 percent of the seats in Parliament. Shiites support removing former Baath party members, most of them Sunnis, from public life.

Shiites, especially those loyal to al-Sadr, also are insisting that Allawi be barred from the coalition. The one-time CIA protege and American favorite is a secular Shiite who was long ago a member of Saddam's Baath party.

U.S. officials had hoped he could take on an important post in the future government, perhaps overseeing the police as interior minister. But al-Sadr loyalists, who played an important part in the Shiites' election success, despise Allawi because he allowed U.S. forces to launch a series of attacks against them in summer 2004.

Also

Iraq's oil minister resigned Monday following protests and riots over soaring gasoline prices and lengthening lines at the pump. December oil exports were the lowest monthly level since the war.

Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum's announcement was a recognition of political reality; over the weekend, the government named Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi as oil minister. Uloum said he was quitting over a recent Cabinet decision to raise gas prices between five- and sevenfold to curb black-market sales of relatively inexpensive Iraqi gas in other countries. He said he did not oppose the decision itself, but rather the failure of the government to live up to its promise to reimburse poor families for the price increase.