Iraq's interim Governing Council Wednesday named Ibrahim Jafari of the Shiite Dawa party as the body's first president, a Kurdish official announced.
Jafari, the Dawa spokesman, was chosen to be the council's president based on his name being the first alphabetically among the nine council members who will share the rotating presidency, Barham Saleh of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) told AFP.
"There was a consensus on the alphabetical order. It was the best solution," said Saleh of the presidency which will change monthly.
Jafari will be followed as president by two fellow Shiites: the Pentagon-backed Ahmed Chalabi and Iyad Allawi, a former Baathist and longtime member of the exiled opposition.
Saleh said US overseer Paul Bremer and the top British official in Iraq, John Sawers, attended the session of the council.
Jafari, a doctor by profession, joined the Dawa movement in 1966. The group, the oldest Islamist movement in Iraq, was founded in 1957-8 and is based on the ideology of reforming Islamic thought and modernizing religious institutions.
The party was banned in 1980 under toppled president Saddam Hussein when Jafari fled the country. Thousands of its members were executed under Saddam's rule. Surviving Dawa members fled to London, Syria, and Tehran. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
