Maliki spurned as Iraq president nominates new PM

BAGHDAD –– Iraq moved closer to turning the page on Nouri Maliki's reign when an alternative prime minister was named Monday to steer the country out of a raging war and save it from breakup.

"The country is in your hands," President Fuad Masum told Haidar Al Abadi after accepting his nomination by parliament's Shiite bloc, in a move immediately welcomed by the United States.

Washington had warned Maliki against stirring trouble after the two-term premier gave a defiant midnight television address suggesting he was ready to fight for his job to the very end.

Haidar Al Abadi was somewhat of a dark horse in the months-long political wrangling over who should be nominated for prime minister after April elections.

The coalition headed by Maliki, who has been prime minister since 2006, won the vote comfortably but his increasingly sectarian policies were seen as partly responsible for the violence that has gripped Iraq recently.

People in a Sunni neighbourhood of the city of Baquba gathered in the street and fired shots in the air to celebrate Maliki's defeat.

"The United States stands ready to fully support a new and inclusive Iraqi government," Brett McGurk, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern, said.

A Shiite politician considered close to Maliki, Abadi was born in Baghdad in 1952 and returned from British exile in 2003 when US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein.

US President Barack Obama, who on Thursday sent warplanes back into the skies over Iraq to halt a devastating jihadist advance in the north, had repeatedly stressed that any viable solution to Iraq's woes would have to start with the formation of a new government.


It had become clear in recent weeks that Maliki had lost support from Washington. Gradually, all his other erstwhile allies followed: Iran, the Shiite clergy and even his own Dawa party.

Moments before Maliki spoke on television, special forces, soldiers and police deployed across Baghdad, especially around the Green Zone district housing the country's key institutions.

Several of the capital's main thoroughfares and bridges were closed to traffic and on Monday morning unusual numbers of security personnel, uniformed and plain-clothed, remained deployed across the city.

His television address, in which he vowed to sue Masum for failing to choose him as prime minister, had dispelled any hope he would step down gracefully.

On Monday afternoon, even as the president shook hands with Abadi, Maliki sent his supporters to protest on Baghdad's main square.