Iraq Confirms Final Election Results

JEFFREY BROWN:

Robert, it was a day of contrast there in which the political process moved forward but violence continued.

Start with the certification of the December vote. Where does that leave things and what happens next?

ROBERT WORTH:

Well, what this does is give us 15 days. The parliament has to meet within the next 15 days. So it really just starts the political process. So far, there's been a lot of political talks between the major political alliances but nothing really official. So now there's a deadline. They have 15 days to meet and when they do meet, they've got to elect a speaker and deputy speakers. At that point another deadline kicks in, another 15 days until they have to elect a president.

There are more deadlines after that and if they meet them all in about two months, they'll have a full government. However, last year they didn't meet any of their deadlines, and it took a lot longer than expected. That may well happen again this year.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Now in terms of forming a government, are negotiations between the various parties Shiite, Sunni and Kurd, are they ongoing now?

ROBERT WORTH:

Yes, they are. They've been going on since the election, and the Shiites once again are the largest party. The assumption has been that there's going to be a national unity government. This is what everybody is saying. This is what the Americans want. This is what the players say they want. What the shape of that government is going to be is not yet clear.

Recently, Allawi, who'll lead the secular group, has said that he's going to join with the Sunni groups and form a single block. What that means is really not clear. It looks like the two largest groups, the Kurds and Shiites, will mostly be in control.

There's been a lot of talk about trying to hand out power as evenly as possible, but given that these alliances have very different views on policy, it's hard to say how that will work out.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Now, in the meantime today there was a car bombing at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad. What can you tell us about that, and is it being seen there as part of the continuing sectarian violence?

ROBERT WORTH:

Well, it's a little bit surprising. Usually when mosques are bombed in Baghdad, they tend to be Shia mosques. Insurgents have often targeted Shia funeral processions, mosques, holidays, that kind of thing.

In fact, it was pretty unusual that yesterday, which is a major, major Shiite holiday, Ashura, there was no significant violence. In past years there's always been a lot of violence on Ashura. So we were surprised when we found out that it was a Sunni mosque that was bombed today in Dura.

However, the bombing took place in an area where there's so much violence that it is almost indiscriminate at times. There's rival gangs attacking each other. Some of it is just criminal and some of it is political. I don't think it's linked to what's going on with the parliament. We've had some scattered violence ever since the elections with only a few major big bombings.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Well, while we're in this post-election period, what is the current thinking about the strength of the insurgency at this point?

ROBERT WORTH:

It's difficult to say. You know, the estimates of the strength have ranged sort of up to 20,000 and more in terms of its members. There has recently been a lot of fighting, we're told, between the foreign-led Jihadist elements whose strength is mostly in western Iraq.

They have fought with Iraqi insurgents who are sometimes called nationalist insurgents. These are the insurgents who really just fight American forces; whereas, Zarqawi and the Jihadist insurgents tend to strike at civilians and particularly Shiites. And that really angered a lot of the so-called "nationalist insurgents."

You have had a lot of fighting recently. It's hard to tell exactly how much. Sometimes this gets dismissed as American propaganda by people who think that the insurgents really are more unified than that.

But there's certainly been some conflict, and there's been a lot of attacks on tribal sheiks lately who were cooperating with the Americans, who seem to be part of this pattern of insurgents who want to cooperate in some way at least with the Iraqi government to see if they can get anything out of this new government and with the Jihadist element who have no intention of cooperating with anybody.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Now yesterday, two U.S. Marines were killed near Fallujah. Has the level of engagement and violence between U.S. forces and insurgents, has that continued in recent days?

ROBERT WORTH:

Yeah, it has. In fact there's been quite a few Americans, marines and soldiers killed mostly in Anbar, bar which again is where a lot of this violence is going on. There's — American commanders say they have a lot of progress in pushing the insurgency out of central Iraq, especially in Baghdad. We haven't had the kinds of major car bombings that we had last spring and even into the fall. There were some serious huge car bombings in the fall.

There's been a lot less of that in the capital and the Americans say this is because they have pushed the hardest line insurgents into western Anbar, and so you're still seeing a lot of violence out there.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Robert, can you get a feel for what daily life is like in the sense of how much the insurgency is impacting daily services, power, et cetera, for the average citizen there?

ROBERT WORTH:

Well, you know, certainly life is still very hard for most Iraqis and very dangerous. One recent development, there's been a lot of attacks on oil pipelines which have led to shutdowns. We've seen that recently in Kirkuk, in the North. It's happened in central Iraq as well; and that obviously cuts down on exports and ultimately makes life harder for all Iraqis.

JEFFREY BROWN:

And finally, yesterday marked a month since American journalist Jill Carroll was kidnapped. There was a video released yesterday. Today apparently there was a new deadline issued. Do you know any more about who's holding her or any efforts to release her?

ROBERT WORTH:

We don't, really. We know that all kind of efforts are being made to release her. What the status of those is, is really not clear. The videotapes have appeared with a logo on them saying "Revenge Brigade," so it's sort of been assumed that that's the name of the group that's holding her but that's not clear either. This could be a fake name.

And as far as these latest demands, they've been transferred — they've been reported by the station, a Kuwaiti television station, that showed the videotape that appeared last night.

So they're saying that they've heard from people close to her captors that this is the demand, that they want their demands met or they will kill her by Feb. 26. We've also heard through this Kuwaiti station that she's being held in Baghdad with a group of other women hostages. It's hard to say how much truth there is in all these claims but certainly we saw another videotape last night and it was again distressing, although less so than the last one –than the second videotape. This is the third.

In the second videotape she looked terrified, really upset, and in this one she appears calm. It's as though she were reading a script this time and one has to wonder if they deliberately tried a tactic of making her appear calm and safe and, in fact, she says in last night's videotape, "I'm fine."

JEFFREY BROWN:

All right. Robert Worth of the New York Times, thanks very much.

ROBERT WORTH:

Thank you.