Yawer, Ghazi al- (1958– )

Iraqi ethnic leader and president of the interim Iraqi government 2004–05 and vice-president in the transitional government of 2005–06. A US-educated moderate Sunni Muslim and former exile, he returned to Iraq after the US invasion in 2003 and became a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, which served the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). He became president of the Council in 2004 and interim president of Iraq, after the return of Iraqi sovereignty from the CPA. In April 2005, the newly elected Iraqi parliament chose Jalal Talabani as president and Yawer as vice-president. He was replaced as vice-president by Tariq al-Hashimi, the leader of the (Sunni) Iraqi Islamic Party, after the December 2005 general election.

Yawer called on the United Nations (UN) to play a greater role in re-establishing full sovereignty in Iraq after the US-led Iraq War and blamed much of the post-war violence in Iraq on poor US planning. He has had broad backing from Sunni and Shia Muslims and Kurds.

Born in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Yawer's uncle heads the Shammar people, one of the largest ethnic groups in the Gulf region and which includes both Shia and Sunni Muslim clans. In the mid-1980s Yawer's family moved to Saudi Arabia. There, and also in the USA, he studied engineering and became an industrialist. After US troops overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, Yawer, who had not formerly been active among Iraqi exiles opposed to Saddam, sold his business and returned to Iraq. In the January 2005 national assembly elections, he led ‘the Iraqis’, a Sunni list, which attracted 2% of the national vote. In December 2005, he joined the Iraqi National List, a coalition with secular politicians, including Iyad Allawi and Adnan Pachachi.