Condi Tells Iraqis to Get Their Act Together

Posted on April 25, 2005

Frustrated with the minimal results from their hands-off approach to forming an Iraqi government, Condeleeza Rice and Dick Cheney have started working the phones, telling Iraqi leaders to hurry up and form a new government. The New York Times reports:

Worried about a political deadlock in Iraq and a spike in mayhem from an emboldened insurgency, the Bush administration has pressed Iraqi leaders in recent days to end their stalemate over forming a new government, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney personally exhorting top Kurdish and Shiite politicians to come together.
The White House pressure, reported by Iraqi officials in Baghdad and an American official in Washington on Sunday, was a change in the administration's hands-off approach to Iraqi politics. The change was disclosed as insurgents unleashed a devastating technique, with twin double bombings at a police academy in Tikrit and an ice cream parlor in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad that killed 21 and wounded scores more.
Ms. Rice on Friday telephoned Iraq's new president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to urge him to complete the government "as soon as they could" and "to get a status of where things were," a senior State Department official in Washington said Sunday. The official stressed that Ms. Rice did not tell Mr. Talabani how to form a government, just that the process needed to be concluded.

The Shiites don't seem to be taking the prodding very well. They surprised everyone by announcing that our guy Dr. Allawi will now have no part in the new government at all. And the Shiites are also saying that they will be much more strict with Sharia law than those slackers in Iran. Great. Just great.