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The New York Sun's Eli Lake reports that Ahmad Chalabi asked his nephew Salem Chalabi to back the choice of Iyad Allawi as the interim Iraqi government's prime minister.
Mr. Allawi’s nomination Friday to lead the interim government was supported by one of his rivals in the old Iraqi resistance, Ahmad Chalabi. Mr. Chalabi, who spent the weekend in Najaf trying to broker a resolution of the standoff between Muqtada al-Sadr and American forces, instructed his nephew, Salem Chalabi, by satellite phone to vote for Mr. Allawi’s nomination, according to Iraqi National Congress sources.
“On the governing council there were some differences, but there has been a lot of cooperation between Dr. Chalabi and Iyad Allawi,” one of Mr. Chalabi’s deputies, Haidar Musawi, told the Sun yesterday.
Does Chalabi think the Caretaker Government is set to fail, and therefore Allawi's association with it will neutralize him politically over the medium term?
Meantime, the US' and UN's choice for president of the Caretaker Government, Adnan Pachachi, has resigned, after Iraqi Governing Council members chose Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer as the new transitional government's president. Al-Yawer, a Sunni, who was educated in Saudi Arabia and at Georgetown, has reportedly been quite critical of the US occupation.
After the announcement of the members of the new cabinet, the IGC dissolved itself.