Averting civil war in Iraq

SECRETARY OF STATE Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw flew into Baghdad to deliver an urgent message to Iraqi politicians Sunday and yesterday: Agree on a candidate who can obtain the two-thirds parliamentary vote required to become prime minister and form a national unity government capable of stamping out Iraq's incipient civil war between Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites.

If any proof was needed of the gravity of that counsel, it was Sunday's toll of Iraqi civilians: More than 50 were found dead. In one incident, 10 men had been shot execution-style. In another, a mortar barrage took the lives of nine civilians, among them three women and two children. Sadly, Sunday's body count of Iraqis murdered merely for being Sunni Arab or Shi'ite cannot be counted as the exception. At least 12 more were killed yesterday.

Rice was also justified in alluding to the American and British stake in seeing Iraqi politicians resolve their differences and halt the sectarian slaughters that Al Qaeda in Iraq and its commander, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have sought to provoke. Rice was properly assertive when she said: ''A lot of human treasure has been put on the line to give Iraq the chance to have a democratic future."

Some of Iraq's factional leaders may not have liked hearing Rice's stern message. Indeed, some have complained that the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been meddling improperly in Iraqi politics by hectoring them to settle on a prime minister. Some have also complained about his insistence that they include in the new government Sunni Arab parties capable of thwarting sectarian warfare. But like it or not, the exhortation Iraqi leaders heard from Rice will serve the best interests of their people, and not merely the interests of America and Britain.

What Khalilzad and Rice should not be doing is to try to dictate to Iraqis their choice of a prime minister. This is what Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of an influential pro-Iranian party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Republic in Iraq, accused Khalilzad of doing. Hakim said last week that the US ambassador had said President Bush does not want the current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, to become prime minister in the new government. Jaafari has been a weak leader and is now allied with the thuggish clerical demagogue Moqtada al-Sadr. Nevertheless, it is not Bush's place to select the head of a government elected by Iraqis. Jaafari's replacement should not owe his power to the White House. Iraqis may need American and British help for a little while longer, but ultimately Iraq's elected leaders will have to save their own compatriots from the inferno of civil war.