AP Interview: Allawi says Iraq’s political impasse could drag on for months

AP Interview: Allawi says Iraq impasse drags on

BAGHDAD — A secular Shiite vying to become Iraq’s next prime minister said Tuesday the country’s feuding politicians have not even started discussing how to form a government a month after elections failed to produce a clear winner.

It could take anywhere from two to five months to cobble together a new governing coalition out of Iraq’s fractious parties, during which time insurgents are taking advantage of a “power vacuum” to carry out bloody attacks like those that have killed some 100 people since Friday, Ayad Allawi told The Associated Press.

“We haven’t gotten to the discussion phase yet, how to form a government, when and by whom,” Allawi said in his office in Baghdad, dressed in a brown suit with the Iraqi flag hanging behind his chair. On the wall was a black and white photo of Baghdad from nearly a century earlier.

Allawi’s bloc came out ahead in the vote by two seats over Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s coalition, but both parties are far short of the necessary majority needed to govern alone. The candidates are now scrambling to muster the support needed to form a government.

Al-Maliki, who has led a government dominated by religious Shiites for the past four years, has adamantly refused to accept the results of the election — even though international observers said the vote was fair — and is pursuing a number of avenues to ensure that he is chosen to form the next government.

An al-Maliki aide denied that a power vacuum existed or that the government was to blame for the delays in political negotiations.

“In other democratic countries, forming a government takes months and in Iraq we have multiple political powers,” said Sadiq al-Rikabi, though he agreed that the political situation is leading to increased violence.

Allawi, who is seen by many as the man who can overcome Iraq’s deep sectarian divide, has led the criticism of al-Maliki for failing to accept the results.

“Democracy is being raped in Iraq,” said Allawi, a Shiite by birth with wide support in the Sunni community.

Sounding increasingly frustrated with his main political opponent, Allawi said he fears more bloodshed lies ahead “because people are sensing there are powers who want to obstruct the path of democracy — terrorists and al-Qaida have been on the go.”

Allawi said he still has not spoken to al-Maliki personally, although there is “very preliminary dialogue” between the two blocs.

Once a member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, Allawi fought off an ax-wielding assassin believed to have been sent by the then-ruler and went on to establish an opposition group aimed at overthrowing Saddam’s government.

Allawi said he thinks of that attack every day; his right leg still aches where the limb was almost severed. It’s a reminder, he says, that he is always “pursued.”

Backed by the U.S. as Iraq’s prime minister in 2004, he seemed doomed politically by his American ties when his cross-sectarian party was trounced at the polls the next year in favor of religious parties.

But he positioned himself as an alternative to religious-tinged politics, and the results from the March 7 election make him the front-runner to be the country’s next prime minister.

His victory at the head of a group supported by both Sunnis and Shiites suggested millions of Iraqis are looking for a change from the politics that have been dominated by sects and ethnicities.

Allawi does not easily conform to the sectarian and ethnic boundaries so often associated with Iraq’s fragile postwar experiment with democracy. At the same time, he’s also been jokingly referred to as “Saddam without a mustache” by Iraqis who feel the country needs a strong ruler — a nickname that has done little to endear him to the country’s Shiites who long suffered under Saddam.

He has long called for a greater say for the disaffected Sunnis that ran Iraq for decades, but have been sidelined since the U.S. invasion in 2003 by Shiite and Kurdish-dominated governments.

The Sunnis turned out in force in the March election and there are fears that if their chosen candidate Allawi is somehow prevented from forming a government, they might once again take up arms.