I will not be forced out by US and UK, says Iraqi PM

guardian: Iraq's embattled prime minister has defiantly refused to give up his claim to head the country's next government in spite of strong American and British pleas for an end to a deadlock which has paralysed the country for almost four months.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian in Baghdad - his first since Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw pleaded with him and his rivals for an immediate agreement to prevent a slide to civil war - Ibrahim Jaafari insisted he would continue to carry out his duties.

"I heard their points of view even though I disagree with them," he said, referring to Ms Rice and Mr Straw's hectic arm-twisting visit to the Iraqi capital which ended on Monday.

Mr Jaafari won the nomination for Iraq's leadership by a single vote within the Shia bloc that came out on top in last December's election. But the bloc controls less than half the seats in parliament and so long as the Sunni, Kurdish and secular parties refuse to back him, Iraq is left in a political vacuum. Mr Jaafari, a former doctor who spent years in exile in Britain while Saddam Hussein ruled, will not give way to other candidates from his bloc who have wider support.

Using the argument that the US and Britain had toppled Saddam in order to bring democracy, he turned it against them. "There is a decision that was reached by a democratic mechanism and I stand with it ... We have to protect democracy in Iraq and it is democracy which should decide who leads Iraq. We have to respect our Iraqi people," he said.

Tampering with democracy was risky, he insisted. "People will react if they see the rules of democracy being disobeyed. Every politician and every friend of Iraq should not want people to be frustrated," he said. "Everyone should stick to democratic mechanisms no matter whether they disagree with the person," he added pointedly. Read more