Top job in Iraq said to be offered

WASHINGTON -- In a sign that a plan for the new Iraqi interim government is beginning to take shape, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told the Italian parliament yesterday that a candidate has been offered a top position in the new Iraqi interim government, but has yet to accept it.

Berlusconi, who met Wednesday with President Bush at the White House, said the head of a ''new, credible authoritative" interim Iraqi government had been selected and a qualified candidate has been chosen as a backup.

Berlusconi did not identify the candidate or specify whether the position was prime minister or president, according to the Associated Press. A US official in Washington said yesterday that Adnan Pachachi, a member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and a favorite of the Bush administration, had strong support for the position of president, but had not yet indicated whether he was interested in the job.

With the deadline for a transition to a new Iraqi interim government six weeks away, US officials and Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy responsible for brokering the new government, have been under pressure to come up with a list of interim leaders who are acceptable to a majority of Iraqis.

''We have a lot of work to do now in the next 42 days, roughly," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told a meeting yesterday of representatives from countries that have contributed to the US-led effort in Iraq. ''We have been in constant consultations with Lakhdar Brahimi all through his current stay in Iraq. We think he is getting closer to the designation of individuals who will be in the interim Iraqi government."

Powell also said that the ''slate of officers" Brahimi will designate will be brought to the UN Security Council and to Secretary-General Kofi Annan so that they could ''examine the quality of these individuals."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Iraq's political transition is at a ''critical stage" and that Bush would give a speech on that topic on Monday at the Army War College in Pennsylvania.

The possible appointment of Pachachi, a Sunni Muslim leader and elder statesman who has said he has no long-term political ambitions, has been the center of speculation for many weeks. Pachachi sat beside Laura Bush at this year's State of the Union address and made an impression on diplomats at the United Nations when he visited, refusing to sit behind a placard bearing his name and insisting instead on one that simply read ''Iraq."

Fred Eckhard, a UN spokesman, and two US-based Iraqi diplomats said they had not received information that anyone had been offered a post in the interim government, which is expected to include a president, two deputy presidents, and a prime minister who will oversee the day-to-day operations of the ministries.

Brahimi laid out a plan for an interim government consisting for the most part of technical experts -- not politicians -- at the Security Council meeting before his most recent trip to Baghdad. At that meeting, he argued that they should run Iraq until another government is elected in January, and said the best candidates were those who would concentrate on running the country rather than campaigning for office and using their appointed positions for political advantage.

But building consensus in Iraq among leaders has not been an easy task, and many said Brahimi's vision had to be dramatically altered to accomodate political realities. For example, Iraqis have urged Brahimi to take ethnicity into account when he makes key decisions about the post.

In recent days, after a meeting of two Kurdish members of the Iraqi Governing Council, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, , a statement was issued calling for either the job of prime minister or president be given to a Kurd, according to Qubad Talabany, a Washington-based representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the main party in the eastern Kurdish region of Iraq.

''I'm sure everyone is jockeying for power here. It's at a critical stage," Talabany said.

Brahimi has been urged to seek out a charismatic figure who can unite Iraq on June 30, the day of the transfer of political power to Iraqis, rather than appointing a government solely of technocrats who will fail to rally the support of the people, according to several UN diplomats and Iraqi officials.

''You need a face to put in front of them who can relate to the Iraqi people so they can support that government," said Rahman Aljebouri, country programs director for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, which helps support political parties in Iraq. ''You need a figure . . . If he can find that one person who 70 percent of Iraqis agree on, that's a huge success for Brahimi."

Farah Stockman can be reached at fstockman@globe.com.