IRAQ: Some say Iraq's likely new prime minister may be the moderate face of a conservative Islamist alliance, writes Michael Jansen in Damascus
The United Iraq Alliance, the Shia coalition that won a plurality of seats in Iraq's parliament in the January 30th election, is set to nominate the serving interim vice president, Dr Ibrahim al-Jaafari, as its candidate for the premiership.
Dr al-Jaafari, a physician, is, therefore, expected to succeed Dr Iyad Allawi to become the first elected prime minister since the fall of the British-backed monarchy in 1958.
Dr al-Jaafari heads Dawa, Iraq's largest and oldest Islamic party, founded in 1957.
His candidacy was assured on Tuesday when Mr Adel Abdel Malik, the interim finance minister and choice of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and, reportedly, of the US, dropped out of the race.
Two other alliance candidates were the man who was once Washington's favourite, Mr Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, and Dr Hussein Shahristani, a nuclear scientist close to Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most influential figure on the Iraqi political scene. Dr al-Jaafari, a mild-mannered physician, was born in the Shia holy city of Kerbala in 1947 and studied medicine in Mosul in the north where he joined Dawa, a Shia fundamentalist revolutionary party banned by the secular Baathist regime.
He fled to the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1980, where he attempted to prevent Tehran from taking over the party.
In 1989 he went to London where he emerged as a senior Dawa figure in Europe.
He returned to Baghdad after the ouster of the Baath regime, served on the US-appointed Governing Council, and in the interim government.
Dr al-Jaafari is considered a "moderate" and "secularist" because he is a layman rather than a cleric and an educated professional who wears suits and ties rather than kaftans and turbans.
His wife, also a medical doctor, remains in London due to the lack of security in Iraq.
Dr al-Jaafari follows the conservative practice of refusing to shake hands with women and insists on conducting interviews in Arabic although he speaks English fluently.
In his view, "Islam should be the official religion of the country, and one of the main sources of legislation, along with other sources that do not harm Muslim sensibilities."
This could mean he favours the imposition of Islamic law on the personal plane, allowing men easy divorce and custody of children and giving women half a man's share in inheritance.
When, during an interview last summer, The Irish Times asked Dr al-Jaafari if women should remain in the home and be barred from driving, as they are in Saudi Arabia, he said, jokingly, that he would not like to prevent his wife from practising her profession or getting about on her own.
However, a leading expert on Iraq's Shias, Dr Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, points out that Dr al-Jaafari may be the moderate face of a deeply conservative party which, along with the other 10 mainly religious parties in the alliance, could promote a traditional Islamist agenda during the drafting of Iraq's new constitution, a task set to be completed by mid-August.