Haider al-abadi's name was not even among those on the list of candidates for prime minister the week before he was nominated for the post on August nth. But once the 62-year-old was mentioned in a meeting without the presence of Nuri al-Maliki, the then incumbent, Iraq's fractious political groups rapidly agreed to back him. Mr Abadi has a month in which to find a government to present to parliament for approval. Mr Abadi hails from Mr Maliki's Dawa party, which is part of the State of Law parliamentary bloc that won the largest number of seats in a general election in May. He is acceptable to most Shias. But, since he spent almost 30 years in exile in Britain until his return to Iraq in 2003, he is widely seen as closer to the West than he is to Iran, the biggest patron of Iraq's Shia-dominated government. This has gone some way towards reassuring Iraq's Kurds and Sunnis, not to mention the Americans.
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