Key Figures in the New Government
Interim president
Jalal Talabani
Photo taken from http://www. bbc.co.uk
On April 6, 2005, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was elected by the Iraqi government to the largely-ceremonial post of interim president. His nomination ended the two months of political impasse that followed the elections for a transitional national assembly in January.
Mr. Talabani is the first democratically elected Iraqi president in the last 50 years. As the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), (one of the two main Kurdish parties in northern Iraq), he is also the first non-Arab to head an Arab state. He promised to work with all ethnic and religious groups in rebuilding post-war Iraq.
The presidency council includes Mr Talabani's two deputies: the Shia Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and the former interim president Ghazi Yawer, a Sunni.
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Interim prime minister
Ibrahim al-Jaafari
Photo taken from http://www. bbc.co.uk
Iraq's newly-inaugurated presidency council named Ibrahim Jafaari - a former Deputy President of Iraq in the Interim government - as prime minister on April 7, 2005.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari is from the Shia Islamist Dawaa Party. He was given a month to name his cabinet, whose major task will be to oversee the drafting of a permanent constitution before the elections for new National Assembly in December.
Mr. Jaafari was the preferred candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance – the Shia-dominated alliance that gained nearly half the votes in January 2005's elections.
After the crushing of a Shia rebellion against Saddam Hussein in the 1970s, Jafaari, a former doctor, lived in Iran and Britain as an exile.
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Vice President
Photo taken from http://www.
bbc.co.uk
Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer
A former businessman and a tribal leader, Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer, a President of Iraq under the Interim government, is a US-educated Sunni Arab and former exile with strong ties to Washington, (although critical of the US-led coalition). As a member of the huge Shammar tribe from the northern city of Mosul, al-Yawer, also has wide support from different religious and ethnic groups.
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Adel Abdul Mahdi
Photo taken from http://www. bbc.co.uk
Adel Abdul Mahd is ian economist and member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the largest party within the Shia coalition.
A political activist from an early age, Mr. Mahdi had been imprisoned, tortured and sentenced to death more than once in the 1960s. In 1969, deprived of his job and passport, he was forced into exile in France. After having lived in Iran for some time, he joined the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Later, from 1992-1996, he served as the official SCIRI representative in Kurdistan.
Adel Abdul Mahdi also served as the Deputy for Abdul Aziz al Hakim (then Minister of Communications) on the Iraqi Governing Council. As a finance minister in the interim government, he persuaded international creditors to write off a large part of Iraq's debt.
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Parliament Speaker
Photo taken from http://www. bbc.co.uk
A Sunni Arab born in Kirkuk, Hajim al-Hassani spent 24 years of his life in exile in the U.S. He worked in the Iraqi Opposition for a number of years and became a member of the Politburo and later, an official spokesman of the Iraqi Islamic Party.
After the US-led invasion in 2003, he returned to Iraq and served as a Deputy Member of the Iraqi Governing Council and Deputy Chair of its Finance Committee. In the Interim Government led by Iyad Allawi after sovereignty was handed back to Irqis in June 2004, Mr al-Hassani took the post of industry minister."You should be part of the suffering of your people... who suffer from power cuts and water shortages... part of their suffering in facing terrorism", al-Hassani, as the new speaker of parliament, addressed the members of parliament.
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