Both are Sunnis, to balance the fact that Mr Allawi is a Shia, and both are members of the Governing Council.But Sheikh Yawar, the head of one of the country’s most powerful tribes, has recently criticised the US occupation. Both are in fact popular choices with the Iraqi street – although the US attempts to arm-twist the Governing Council have dented Mr Pachachi’s standing badly. It was also ignored by the Americans when they made controversial decisions such as the launching of April’s siege of Fallujah, which many council members denounced.America’s reasons for preferring Mr Pachachi over Sheikh Yawar are obvious. It was appointed by the US to give a veneer of Iraqi involvement in their occupation administration, but quickly proved unpopular, and its members were denounced as collaborators. With Mr Brahimi’s role already completely undermined, the Americans now seem to be about to pull the rug from under the Governing Council — and in doing so, expose the new interim government as one appointed by the US alone, without Iraqi involvement.The Governing Council was never the most likely guardian of Iraqi legitimacy. Further talks scheduled for yesterday were postponed at America’s request until today, meaning that the deadline to name the interim government by the end of May was missed.As well as Mr Bremer, a special envoy for President Bush, Robert Blackwill, and the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, are attending the talks.The sight of the Americans trying to bully the Governing Council into accepting their choice is threatening to destroy the interim government’s credibility in the eyes of Iraqis. Talks on naming an interim president for Iraq were deadlocked yesterday as a rift between US occupation officials and the Iraqi leadership they appointed threatens to undermine American plans to hand over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on 30 June.

He has become arguably the most influential Vice-President in modern US history and is often depicted as the real power behind the Bush throne.But this perception – along with the continuing focus on Halliburton – has also helped make him the most unpopular senior member of the administration.The President has declared over and over again that Mr Cheney will remain on the ticket in November, but rumours persist he may be dropped should Mr Bush’s ratings continue to fall.. From the start he was a vociferous advocate of military action to remove Saddam. Halliburton itself believes the continuing controversy over its Iraqi activities is purely political.Nonetheless the new questions are the last thing the White House needs, as Mr Bush’s approval ratings tumble and public doubts mount over the Iraq war.In an administration dominated by hawks, Mr Cheney has been perhaps the biggest hawk of all. But they have also been accused of overcharging the US government.The Pentagon is currently refusing to pay $160m in payments for meals provided to troops in Iraq by KBR, after an audit showed “numerous items missing” from an internal accounting provided by the company.Last night a Cheney spokes-man denied the Vice-President’s office had any part in the allocation of Iraq reconstruction contracts, reiterating that Mr Cheney “has had no involvement whatsoever in government contracting matters since he left private business to run for public office”.An official familiar with the e-mail insisted that it indicated only that the White House was given a standard courtesy call notifying that a contract decision had already been made and was about to be announced publicly. Since then, he has said repeatedly that he has had no interest in, nor involvement with, the company. But the relationship has never ceased to dog him.Since the war ended, Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root have been awarded almost $6bn (£3.3bn) of contracts in Iraq, and have 24,000 employees in the Gulf. We anticipate no problems since action has been co-ordinated w [with] VP’s [Vice-President's] office”.Mr Cheney was chief executive of the Texas-based Halliburton from 1995 until he was picked to be George Bush’s running mate in the summer of 2000.

The links between Dick Cheney and the Halliburton oil services company were under new scrutiny yesterday with the revelation of a Pentagon memo suggesting that the award to Halliburton of Iraq contracts was “co-ordinated” with the Vice-President’s office.
The memo, reported in the latest issue of Time magazine, dates from March 2003, just before the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, and deals with Halliburton’s involvement in the multibillion-dollar contract RIO, or “Restore Iraqi Oil”.The e-mail says that the arrangements for RIO were approved by Douglas Feith, the under-Secretary of Defence for policy and the third-highest ranking civilian official at the Pentagon, “contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. The latest US casualties came in Baghdad, Mosul, and in the holy city of Kufa. The Pentagon says 810 American servicemen have died in Iraq since the invasion, 672 of them since Mr Bush declared an end to “major combat operations” on 1 May 2003.Earlier Senator John Kerry, Mr Bush’s opponent in November’s presidential election and a decorated Vietnam war veteran, paid an early morning visit to the Vietnam war memorial in Washington.He then attended a Memorial Day ceremony in Portsmouth, Virginia.Democrat strategists believe that Mr Kerry’s military record, coupled with recent population shifts, gives the party a chance of carrying traditionally Republican Virginia for the first time since 1964.. Two terror regimes are gone for ever and more than 50 million souls now live in freedom.”But the price of the war in Iraq grows higher by the day, both in terms of Mr Bush’s popularity and of American and Iraqi lives. But Mr Bush also referred to therecent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”We have seen the character of the men and women who wear our country’s uniform in places like Kabul and Kandahar, in Mosul and Baghdad,” the President told a crowd of several hundred people, mostly military personnel and their families “Because of their fierce courage, America is safer. President George Bush praised the “fierce courage” of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday on a Memorial Day that followed another weekend of fighting in Iraq and the deaths of four United States servicemen.
Under a misty and rainy sky, Mr Bush laid the traditional wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, one of many ceremonies across America honouring the dead of many wars.This year’s ceremonies coincide with two high profile events, the opening of a new Second World War memorial on Washington’s National Mall, and the weekend’s 60th anniversary of the June 1944 D-Day landings.