Rice and Straw visit Iraq in bid to break government deadlock

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw (L), US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (C) and Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari meet at the PM's office in Baghdad. Picture / Reuters

BAGHDAD - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Britain's Jack Straw flew to Baghdad on Sunday and pressed Iraqi politicians to break their deadlock and form a unity government that can halt a slide to civil war.

"The Iraqi people are losing patience," Rice said after meeting Sunni, Shia and Kurdish leaders. On the delay of nearly four months in forming a government since elections, she said she had told them: "Your international allies want to see this done."

Pressure on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari looked almost irresistible as a leader of the biggest party in his ruling Shi'ite Alliance joined others in publicly breaking ranks and calling on him to step aside in the name of national consensus.

Though they refused to say so in public, it was a message which appeared to have been conveyed, too, by Rice and Foreign Secretary Straw.

Minority Sunni and Kurdish leaders insist they will not join a cabinet under Jaafari and want a different Shi'ite nominee.

At stake is the future of an Iraq that Rice said remained "vulnerable" to sectarian civil war three years after the US and British invasion. Two US crew were presumed dead on Sunday after the crash of their helicopter, which the US military said was probably shot down by insurgents.

The chill was palpable when Rice and the embattled Jaafari exchanged small talk on a rainstorm raging outside as reporters looked on. The smiles were frosty, the body language awkward.

No breakthrough is likely to be announced during the two-day trip, officials said -- both Iraqi leaders and their visitors are anxious not to give the impression that Washington and London are imposing a new leader over the elected Jaafari.

Jaafari has condemned US "interference" in Iraq's new democracy and an aide said he was ready to fight "to the end".

But his days in office look numbered. For the first time, a leader of the biggest party in the Alliance bloc that nominated him to a second term said publicly he should go: "I call on Jaafari to step down," Jalal al-Deen al-Saghir said.

"The candidate ought to secure a national consensus from other lists and also international acceptance," he said. "This is just the beginning and the other calls will follow."

SCIRI, under Alliance leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, had kept up a solid front in public behind Jaafari since, with support from Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, he beat SCIRI's candidate by a single vote in an internal ballot in February.

But privately the party has been looking for ways to oust Jaafari without breaking up the Alliance, created under guidance from the top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Rice met Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, the losing SCIRI candidate in February and a possible replacement for Jaafari. "It's wonderful to see you," Rice said, the tone clearly warm.

As he flew with Rice from Liverpool following two days of meetings in his home region, Straw was asked if the plan was to force Jaafari to step down. He said: "We will recognise and respect whoever emerges as the leader through this system.

"Our concern, however, is that they have to make swift progress," he added.

Privately, US and British officials make little secret of their misgivings about Jaafari, a soft-spoken Islamist physician, long exiled in London and backed by Iran.

In talks with President Jalal Talabani, Rice and Straw said they hoped to see a prime minister who could unite Iraqis and said Jaafari did not fit the bill, Iraqi political sources said.

It is not clear how Jaafari may be replaced or by whom.

One possible contender, Fadhila party chief Nadim al-Jaberi, told Reuters Jaafari was resisting efforts to persuade him to go gracefully. If the Alliance itself remained divided, it might take the risk of setting a choice of leaders before parliament.

A British embassy official said the ministers were not expected to hold a news conference in Baghdad until Monday. They were meeting Shi'ite, Sunni, Kurdish and secular leaders, both bilaterally and, over dinner on Sunday, as a full group.

With congressional elections in November, President George W. Bush's administration is keen to show progress in Iraq and to start bringing American soldiers home. A sharp increase in sectarian bloodshed in the six weeks since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra has cast a cloud over those prospects.

Two or three dozen bodies turn up daily in Baghdad alone, showing signs of having been killed by death squads.

Former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein's lawyers are likely to be informed this week that he and others will face trial as early as next month on a charge of genocide for the first time, arising from a campaign against Kurds in the late 1980s.

Saddam's first trial, for crimes against humanity in the town of Dujail, is due to resume on Wednesday in Baghdad.

- REUTERS