UN sidelined in choice of Iraqi leader

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1227866,00.html

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The messy announcement is not simply a question of amour propre for the UN. British officials regarded it as crucial in persuading ordinary Iraqis that a dramatic change was in train with the transfer of sovereignty. Many observers now fear that yet another critical opportunity has been thrown away.

Allawi faces a tough job in trying to persuade already dubious Iraqis that his appointment was not simply stitched up between the US and self-interested parties on the council, who will hold senior positions in the new government, despite promises from Brahimi that it the interim government and contain fresh faces.

His task will be made doubly difficult by his 20-year exile from Iraq before the fall of Saddam, his links to MI6 and the CIA and his previous enthusiasm for Baathism despite surviving a murder attempt by agents of Saddam.

Allawi and his Iraqi National Accord are also - in other ways - as controversial as his long-time enemy in Ahmad Chalabi and the rival Iraqi National Congress, which has dramatically fallen from grace in Washington amid accusations that it knowingly fed incorrect intelligence to the US to bolster the case for war.

at it, they still provide the bush* administration with control over Iraq.