Shia politician and former exile Ibrahim al-Jaafari emerged as the front-runner on Tuesday to become Iraq's new prime minister as horse-trading to decide the line-up of the next government entered the final stages. Jaafari, a physician and father of five, is head of the Dawa Party, one of two leading religious parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, an Islamist Shia-led group which won 48 percent of the vote in elections on January 30.
"The competition is still fierce but it appears so far that Jaafari will be the United Iraqi Alliance candidate because Dawa is insisting on him," a senior Shia source told Reuters.
The diplomatic and softly-spoken 58-year-old, who holds the largely ceremonial role of vice president in the current interim government, fled Iraq in 1980 after thousands of Dawa members were murdered by Saddam Hussein. His family remains in London.
POST-VOTE TENSIONS;
There are also fears of a rise in ethnic tensions around the divided northern city of Kirkuk, where Kurds won about 60 percent of the local vote after many Arabs and Turkmen, who also lay claim to the oil-rich city, boycotted the election.
Violence continued to boil. The US army said a soldier died and three were hurt on Monday in a roadside bombing near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad.
A provincial government official escaped an assassination attempt in the same area, the Iraqi National Guard said. They also reported that a secondary gas pipeline north of Kirkuk was burning after an insurgent attack. A school in Baghdad was hit by a mortar round, but there were no casualties.
In Basra, southern Iraq, kidnappers released a wealthy Turkish businessman held for almost two months. His wife said they were criminals, with no religious or political motive, and had been paid a ransom of less than $1 million.
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