As much predicted, Ahmad Chalabi is back, and seeking to become Iraq's prime minister:

In a phone interview yesterday with The New York Sun, Mr. Chalabi said he had said yes to the request from prominent members of the United Iraqi Alliance list, the slate of candidates that will likely control a majority of seats in the transitional national assembly to be announced in the coming days.

Update: Knight Ridder's Nancy Youssef has a great piece on Chalabi's irrepressable political ambitions, which suggests he still has quite a bit of maneuvering to do to win over fellow members of his Shiite bloc:

In a survey of 1,500 potential voters in the week before the election, the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies found that only 56.2 percent could name a leader they trusted. Of those, Chalabi received only 1.3 percent of the total. Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and interim President Ghazi al Yawer all received higher numbers.

Worth reading.

Posted by Laura at February 9, 2005 08:25 AM