Four months have passed since the Iraqi election was closed. However, the Iraqi government has not been set up. A "political vacuum" presents in the Iraqi political arena. Just the same as the Iraqis, both the US and British governments are worrying about the vacuum. Recently, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suddenly visited Iraq together. Their intent is very clear: Iraq should establish a unified and powerful government as soon as possible. They also dropped a hint to Iraq, suggesting the current Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari abandon his second attempt to form a cabinet. Will al-Jaafari stay or not? It is of various possibilities.

Being mired in the Iraqi chaos, both the US and British governments are being subjected to strong criticism from their people. So far, more than 2,300 US solders have been killed in Iraq. Approximately two third of the Americans oppose the US government's manner of being involved in the Iraq issue. Voices for withdrawal from Iraq have been getting higher and higher. However, there are analysts believe that if the US government hastily withdraws from Iraq before the Iraqi government assume their security responsibilities, a full-scale civil war and a humanitarian disaster possibly will take place in the country. In that case, all the previous efforts of the United States and Britain will be destroyed. Therefore, the US and Britain are extremely dissatisfied with al-Jaafari and in different ways expressed their hope that al-Jaafari should resign.

The reason why al-Jaafari has not been able to set up his cabinet is he lost the support of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Iraqi Consensus Front. Since April 2005 when al-Jaafari became the Iraqi Prime Minister, the other two factions thought that al-Jaafari has been over partial to the political demands and material interests of the Shiite factions, to a certain extent given a loose rein to the conflicts and disputes between the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish fractions. Therefore, they asked al-Jaafari to quit the position of Prime Minister and advocated letting the Parliament rather than the Shiite fractions' United Iraqi Alliance to decide whether al-Jaafari will stay or not.

However, it is not that easy to force al-Jaafari to give up his position. Although the United Iraqi Alliance holds less than a half of the seats in the Iraq parliament, their seats are far more than those of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Sunni fractions' United Iraqi Alliance. Even within the United Iraqi Alliance, in spite of some streams of forces that echo US and Britain's pressure and request al-Jaafari to quit, the seven parties of the Alliance, in general, are more anxious about the possible split up of the Alliance if al-Jaafari resigns, especially they are worried that the Muqtada al-Sadr's group will take some extreme actions if al-Jaafari quits. Thanks to the support of Shiite extremist Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, Ibrahim al-Jaafari won the vote by 64:63 in February's election on prime minister candidates within the Alliance. The Alliance's attitude indirectly demonstrated a rejection on the US and Britain's attempt to expel al-Jaafari.

Now al-Jaafari is using the "democracy" banner to justify himself, saying whether he will stay or not should be decided by their own "democratic mechanism", but not by a decision as a result of compromise to the US and Britain. Obviously Al-Jaafari's unspoken lines are: the United States and Britain have long been advertising that they were establishing "democracy" and "rule of law" in Iraq. So they cannot use force to expel Iraqi prime minister who was nominated by a "democratic" election.

Right in this impasse, the US, Britain and the Iraqi factions are casting their eyes on the most authoritative Iraqi Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The 76-year-old influential speaker with Iranian nationality perhaps to a large extent will determine the future of al-Jaafari. But the real problem is: can al-Jaafari's dismiss or remaining in position immediately vanish the "political vacuum" in Iraq?

The author Wang Suolao is associate professor with the Institute of International Relations, Peking University.

(People's Daily Online April 19, 2006)