(30 Jul 2003) SHOTLIST
Baghdad - July 30 2003
1. James Wolfensohn, World Bank President speaking to Iraqi Governing Council
2. Close up Wolfensohn
3. Ibrahim al-Jaafari (second from the left gray beard, spectacles and partly obscured) listening to Wolfensohn
4. Various of other members of the Iraqi Governing Council at the meeting
with Wolfensohn
FILE - Baghdad, June 2003
5. Various of Ibrahim al-Jaafari at the ceremony of reopening of the Australian Embassy in Baghdad
STORYLINE
After days of closed-doors deliberations, the transitional Governing Council in Iraq on Wednesday elected Ibrahim al-Jaafari, representative of the Islamic Dawa Party, as chairman.
Al-Jaafari, a Shiite Muslim, will serve as the council's first rotating president from a group of nine council members named to hold the office jointly.
He will serve for the month of August and will be followed in the president's chair by Ahmad Chalabi, a Shiite and leader of the Iraqi National Congress.
Next will be Iyad Allawi, also a Shiite and secretary-general of the Iraq National Accord.
The council set the order of service according to alphabetical order of first names.
Each member will serve as president for one month.
The American-picked council began functioning July 13 and said its first order of business would be to select a president.
But, unable to agree on putting that much power in the hands of any one member of the 25-person group, it decided to share the responsibility among nine members.
It initially had hoped the presidency would be shared among three members, council sources had said.
Al-Jaafari is one of the leaders of the Shias' Islamic Dawa Party based in Kerbala and is also a medical doctor.
Al-Dawa waged a clandestine war against Saddam from their bases in Iran.
It claims to have lost some 70-thousand members of the party in a struggle with the regime
Meanwhile, James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, who is visiting Baghdad for the first time since Saddam Hussein's fall, met Council members on Wednesday.
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