Al-Maliki is novice known for his bluntness

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Jawad al-Maliki, the Shiite politician selected Saturday to be Iraq's first permanent prime minister, is decisive and direct and known for speaking his mind, but he has little experience in governing, Iraqi political leaders said.

Al-Maliki, 55, appeared stiff and nervous as he spoke for the first time after his nomination by Shiite political parties on Saturday morning. Flanked by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, Iraq's most powerful Shiite politician, as well as Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the interim prime minister, he tersely addressed the Sunni fears that he would be too Shiite for the job.

"Those who take responsibility in the new government will be representing the people, not their parties," he said. "These are the general conditions that have to be taken into consideration by the prime minister and his government."

Al-Maliki has not held a formal role in the Iraqi government since the American invasion, but his lack of experience in the executive branch might be one of his biggest strengths, some colleagues said.

"He doesn't have a lot of baggage behind him," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national-security adviser and a friend of al-Maliki's. Al-Maliki comes from a middle class Shiite family in the south of Iraq.

Early years

Born in 1950, he grew up in Hindiay, between Karbala and Hillah. Al-Maliki earned a master's degree in Arabic language and literature in northern Iraq.

He worked in the Education Department in Hillah, according to accounts in Iraqi newspapers, before fleeing the country in 1979. He spent 23 years in exile from the Saddam regime, mostly in Syria.

Al-Maliki had been broadly considered one of the harder-line Shiite politicians, a world view shaped during those years of exile, when he ran the Damascus, Syria, branch of Dawa, a religious Shiite party. But perhaps as a measure of how little he is known, he is alternatively described as a hard-liner and a man able to compromise.

Since crossing back into Iraq secretly in late 2002, not long before the American invasion, he has played a prominent role in the independent de-Baathification committee, showing himself as an uncompromising proponent of policies that took members of the Baath regime out of public jobs and alienated many Sunni Arabs.

He was one of the main drafters of the country's constitution last year, and it was during that time that he forged relationships with Kurdish parties.

Intransigence noted

An Iraqi politician who used to worked closely with al-Maliki said he is "inflexible, sticks to his own viewpoints, and is very bold in expressing them," and that character trait, he said, will eventually get him into trouble with the Kurdish and Sunni parties.

Al-Maliki has been chairman of the Security Committee of the National Assembly, and speaker of the Shiite bloc, known as the United Iraqi Alliance.

He speaks no foreign languages, but he is able to hold forth on a variety of topics, said Zuhair Humadi, a former secretary-general of the council of ministers, who used to talk politics and poetry with him over long meals.

One independent Shiite woman politician said she had experienced difficulties with al-Maliki because she was a woman. Shatha al-Musawi said al-Maliki had refused to include her and three other Shiite women in a committee that was negotiating over the prime minister's post.

"The incident, along with my history of work with him in the National Assembly, gave me this impression that he thinks women are not qualified enough for this kind of job," she said.