Sunday March 14, 2010
FACTBOX - Five facts about Iraq's Iyad Allawi
(Reuters) - A coalition led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was running second in early vote counts on Sunday in a parliamentary election seen as a test for Iraq's tenuous democracy after years of sectarian slaughter.
Allawi's secular, cross-sectarian Iraqiya list trailed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition in the national vote count but led in four of 18 provinces and was dominating largely Sunni areas.
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Undated file photo shows Iyad Allawi, the head of the secular Iraqiya bloc and Iraq's former prime minister, a candidate for the March 7, 2010 parliamentary election. (REUTERS/Staff/Files) |
Allawi, 64, ran in the election on a nationalist platform, hoping to capitalise on Iraqis' disenchantment with the Islamist parties that have dominated power since 2003.
He is known to covet the prime minister's post.
Here are five facts about Allawi:
* A secular Shi'ite, Allawi headed a transitional government from 2004-05, when the United States pulled the strings and Iraq was on the verge of a sectarian civil war.
* A fluent English speaker who received a medical degree in London, Allawi spent more than 30 years in exile and returned as an ally of the United States after the 2003 invasion.
* Allawi, himself a former member of the now-outlawed Baath party, says he survived a 1987 assassination attempt in London by Baathist agents when Saddam Hussein was in power.
* He has become a leading critic of the U.S. invasion, and of Maliki's Shi'ite-led government, accusing it of failing to provide better services, security and more jobs after almost four years in office.
* He was once also highly critical of Iran for meddling in Iraq and supporting Shi'ite militia, but he is reported to have since sought to mend fences with Tehran. A visit he paid to Saudi Arabia before the election sparked controversy among Iraqis suspicious of foreign interference in their affairs.
(Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Jon Hemming)
Copyright © 2010 Reuters
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