Shi’ites set secret vote for nominee

BAGHDAD — Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Shi’ite once known for his ties to Washington, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the conservative vice president, will face off in a secret ballot today to determine who will be the Shi’ite majority’s choice for Iraqi prime minister, officials said.

Terrorist violence continued yesterday with three U.S. soldiers killed and eight wounded when a roadside bomb detonated near a helicopter as it was carrying out a medical evacuation, the military said.

The medical team was sent by helicopter to attend to a soldier injured in a vehicle accident in a southwestern neighborhood of Baghdad, Reuters news agency reported.

U.S. Marines targeted insurgents in raids on houses on the second day of an offensive in several troubled cities west of Baghdad.

In Ramadi, Marines set up checkpoints, searched cars, imposed a nighttime curfew and sealed off sections of the city. Iraqi Maj. Abdul Karim al-Faraji said troops detained a prominent Sunni sheik, Mohammed Nasir Ali al-Ijbie, who leads the al-Bufaraj tribe, and 12 of his relatives. The Marines said they detained 42 insurgents and seized several weapons caches.

Militants also released two Indonesian journalists captured last week in Ramadi. Reporter Meutya Viada Hafid, 26, and 36-year-old cameraman Budiyanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, arrived in Jordan late yesterday.

The decision to hold a secret ballot came after the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance, which has most of the seats in the 275-member National Assembly, was unable to decide on a nominee ” despite days of negotiations.

Chalabi spokesman Haidar al-Moussawi said the most powerful man in predominantly Shi’ite Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, met with Finance Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi in the southern city of Najaf and gave his backing for whatever decision the alliance makes.

“Al-Sistani assured that whoever the alliance will choose, he will agree on him,” Mr. al-Moussawi said.

Although Mr. Chalabi and his supporters say he had the backing needed for the nomination, the vote between the two men was anything but a sure thing.

The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main group in the alliance, had tried to persuade Mr. Chalabi to quit the race, some of its senior officials said.

“We had hoped that we would agree on one person without the secret ballot, because we fear that such a vote will cause divisions inside the alliance,” said Jawad Mohammed Taqi, a senior member of the group.

Whoever wins the balloting, he will face Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose party came in third after a Kurdish coalition and received 40 seats.

Mr. al-Jaafari, the president of the Islamic Dawa Party, also is Western-oriented, but is considered by many to be a cleric in a business suit.

Mr. Chalabi is a former exile leader who heavily promoted the idea that dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But Mr. Chalabi later fell out with some key members of the Bush administration over accusations that he passed secrets to Iran.

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