PROFILE: Iyad Allawi: Secular Iraqi leader

Thu, 11 Nov 2010

Baghdad - Former Iraqi premier Iyad Allawi was a member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party until falling out with the former president and finding himself in exile in the 1970s.

As Saddam consolidated his power over the party and the country, Allawi went abroad to continue his studies in neurology, eventually defecting from the Baath while in London in 1975.

An active politician in exile, it is said that Allawi plotted to overthrow Saddam at various points in the 1980s and was nearly assassinated by Baathist for his role.

He was also a key player in creating the Iraqi National Accord, a group which aimed at a coup in the 1990s, the plan for which was uncovered by Saddam's intelligence units and the plotters inside Iraq executed.

Allawi, a secular Shiite with Arab nationalist leanings, headed Iraq's transitional government before the 2005 elections. He has since had bitter disputes with the man who has been premier since 2006, Nuri al-Maliki.

He blames the premier for failing to secure Iraq, charged there was a sectarian nature of al-Maliki's reign and has also spoken out against neighboring Shiite-majority Iran, which he accused of meddling in Baghdad's affairs and supporting militias.

For elections held on March 7, Allawi formed the Iraqiya list, a secular nationalist group which was backed by Sunnis.

The grouping won 91 seats in parliament, making it the largest bloc, but Allawi failed to garner a coalition to enable him to regain the premiership.

Allawi was born in 1945 to a Shiite merchant family in the capital Baghdad. His father was also a politician considered an important figure in the negotiations to free Iraq from British rule.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/353094,allawi-secular-iraqi-leader.html.