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Al-Jaafari is described in the interview as:
[speaking]in a languorous manner, relaxing in a black pinstripe suit in a dim ground-floor office lined with Arabic books like the multivolume "World of Civilizations."
"There was a stand from both the American government and President Bush to promote a democratic policy and protect its interests," he said, sipping from a cup of boiled water mixed with saffron. "But now there's concern among the Iraqi people that the democratic process is being threatened."
Al-Jaafari, along with Ahmed Chalabi, is one of the "Gucci Guerrillas" who stayed out of the country during Saddam's gruesome tyranny and Jaafari in particular has been described as feckless and beset by lassitude as Shi'ite factions fight for de facto control of his government.
Senior Shiite politicians said Tuesday that the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, had weighed in over the weekend, telling the leader of the Shiite bloc that President Bush did not want Mr. Jaafari as prime minister. That was the first time the Americans had openly expressed a preference for the post, the politicians said, and it showed the Bush administration's acute impatience with the political logjam.
Jaafari has in the eyes of well-informed observers become the catspaw of Shi'ite militias, particularly those of Muqtader Al-Sadr, which are now threatening to hijack the new democracy in the direction of a "tyranny of the majority." Al-Jaafari goes on in the interview to stress his "laissez-faire" attitude toward the militias:
Mr. Jaafari did not say in the interview what deals he had made [with the Sadr bloc to get their 32 votes for his PM job], but he insisted that engagement with the cleric's movement was needed for the stability of Iraq. He said he had disagreed with L. Paul Bremer III, the former American proconsul, when Mr. Bremer barred Mr. Sadr and some Sunni Arab groups from the Iraqi Governing Council in 2003.
"The delay in getting them to join led to the situation of them becoming violent elements," he said.
"I look at them as part of Iraq's de facto reality, whether some of the individual people are negative or positive," he said.
Mr. Jaafari used similar language when laying out his policy toward militias: that inclusion rather than isolation was the proper strategy.
The Iraqi government will try "to meld them, take them, take their names and make them join the army and police forces." "And they will respect the army or police rather than the militias"
Typical of this faineant passive-aggressive specimen to blame the US for "the situation of them becoming violent elements." [Jaafari spent his Gucci G time in London, but on TV he prefers to speak Arabic] And does "inclusion" mean that Jaafari, who ultimately owes his own job to the US, will try to have Sadr tone down his violent anti-American rhetoric? Wong does not reveal his own questions during this interview, and apparently does not have the handle that NYT MIA John Burns does on just how to interview a senior Iraqi official. But Wong does provide comment:
Recruiting militia members into the Iraqi security forces has not been a problem under the Jaafari government. The issue has been getting those fighters to act as impartial defenders of the state rather than as political partisans. The police forces are stocked with members of the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization, an Iranian-trained militia, who still exhibit obvious loyalties to their political party leaders. Police officers have performed poorly when ordered to contain militia violence, and they even cruise around in some cities with images of Mr. Sadr or other religious politicians on their squad cars.
Also, the hideous reality of sectarian hatred manifests itself in the Shi'ites' institutional stronghold in the government:
There is growing evidence of uniformed death squads operating out of the Shiite-run Interior Ministry, and Ambassador Khalilzad has been lobbying the Iraqis to place more neutral figures in charge of the Interior and Defense Ministries in the next government. That has caused friction with Shiite leaders, and some have even accused the ambassador of implicitly backing the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.
Perhaps Amb. Khalilzad is getting too deeply involved in the oriental intrigue afoot in the corridors of the Green Zone, but:
But Mr. Jaafari said he supported the Americans' goal. "We insist that the ministers in the next cabinet, especially the ministers of defense and the interior, shouldn't be connected to any militias, and they should be nonsectarian," he said. "They should be experienced in security work. They should keep the institutions as security institutions, not as political institutions. They should work for the central government."
Wong winds up with a sort of kiss-off of the PM whose lack of gravitas and personal decisiveness has reportedly turned the formation of a government into a marathon lawyers' lunch of quibbling and infighting with no credible referee save perhaps the American Ambassador:
In the first two years of the war, Mr. Jaafari emerged as one of the most popular politicians in Iraq, especially compared with other exiles like Ahmad Chalabi, the former Pentagon favorite. A doctor by training and well-versed in the Koran, Mr. Jaafari comes from a prominent family in Karbala, the Shiite holy city. But since taking power last spring, Mr. Jaafari has come under widespread criticism for failing to stamp out the insurgency and promoting hard-line pro-Shiite policies.
It would have been nice to have asked Jaafari why he flew to Ankara for talks with the Turkish PM without even informing Iraqi President Talabani or any Kurdish leaders. This parasitic lightweight was obviously trying to affect the Kirkuk oilfield problem, which Saddam's ethnic cleansing moved into Arab-controlled territory simply by removing the Kurds as part of Operation Anfal.
But I don't think Ed Wong is the type of reporter to ask hard-hitting questions.
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