BAGHDAD - Iraq's newly elected vice president warned members of his minority Sunni Arab community Wednesday that their demands for a swift foreign troop pullout were unrealistic because of the weakness of Iraq's own fledgling security forces.
"No single Iraqi wants multinational forces to stay but we must look very cautiously at the current security situation," Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar told AFP on the sidelines of the parliament session that elected him vice president.
"Putting a timetable when our forces are weak and not up to the responsibility will create an artificial state of stability that will be taken advantage of by some," said Yawar, who was president in the outgoing interim administration.
"I am not talking about Iraqis that believe in resistance but about other forces from outside that will take advantage of the void to regroup and hit us."
Yawar's position was echoed by the Shiite majority's candidate for the premiership, Ibrahim al-Jafaari, who was expected to be formally nominated Thursday by the three-man presidency, of which Yawar is member.
One of the principal arguments advanced by Sunni Arab voters who boycotted watershed January elections was their opposition to voting under the protection of US-led troops.
A pullout timetable remains the main condition of influential Sunni Arab groups like the Committee of Muslim Scholars for endorsing the new political set-up and calling for an end to the insurgency.
The bespectacled and portly Yawar, sporting the crisp traditional robes that mark him out as a leader of the powerful Shammar tribal confederation, which straddles Iraq's sectarian divide, says most Sunnis regret not having participated in the elections.
"There is a positive rush among Sunnis for dialogue and to enter the political process, so we must take advantage of this by giving them the right weight and representation in the next government," he said, surrounded by his western bodyguards.
"But Sunnis have to realise it is a collective effort that depends on strong nationalism, openness to others and a realisation that we are all in the same small boat floating on a lake infested with crocodiles."
Yawar's election came after the majority Shiites and second-placed Kurds said on Tuesday he was the "common denominator" among the three candidates proposed by Sunni groups.
Sunnis are still reeling from the loss of the elite status they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein's regime and all previous Iraqi governments, and competing factions are vying for the mantle of representing the embittered and divided community.
Aware of the importance of bringing the Sunnis on board, Shiites and Kurds alike have been keen to offer them the maximum of posts in the new government to wean them away from support for the insurgency, despite their tiny representation in parliament.
Two senior members of the Kurdish alliance -- Barham Saleh and Hoshyar Zebari -- have said that Sunnis will get the defense ministry among as many as six posts in the new cabinet.
04/06/2005 13:20 GMT