CAIRO, Egypt – A key Iraqi liberal, Mithal al-Alusi, is optimistic about a new Iraqi government under Ibrahim al-Jaafari after meeting with him Thursday before the weekend vote that secured the current prime minister his second term as the country’s premier.

In an interview Monday, Mr. al-Alusi said the prime minister was prepared “to make a new start.” He added he thought Mr. Jaafari understood that he needed to reach out to Sunni parties, particularly seats controlled by the former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, in order to form a unity government. He thought the former leader of the Iranian-trained Dawa Party would be able to say no to his former hosts.

Mr. Jaafari won a bruising political battle inside the United Iraqi Alliance over the weekend to secure the dominant Shiite coalition’s nomination for prime minister, after cleric Muqtada al-Sadr instructed his followers to support him over his rival, Adel Abdul Mahdi, the preferred choice of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

His nomination, however, has already drawn some protests from Kurdish and Sunni leaders. A spokesman for the largest Sunni party, the Iraqi Accordance Front, told Reuters that his party has serious reservations about the leader of the last government, which allowed Shiite militias to run roughshod over Sunni communities, assuming a four-year term to lead the next one.

But Mr. al-Alusi, whose Iraq Nation Party campaigned on a platform critical of terrorists from both Iran and the former Baath Party, said he was hopeful. “He is very willing to have a new start,” Mr. al-Alusi said. “I do believe Jaafari is willing to make compromises. Jaafari alone cannot do this, and he knows this is his last chance, this is Iraq’s last chance.”

Mr. al-Alusi’s party only won a single seat in the new national assembly compared to the near numeric majority secured by the coalition of Shiite religious parties, the United Iraqi Alliance.

In 2004, Mr. al-Alusi visited Israel and did not hide the trip from the press. After which he was discharged from the Iraqi National Congress, the party of Ahmad Chalabi. In February of last year, his two sons were gunned down by assassins. Yesterday, Mr. al-Alusi said he was campaigning for the post of defense minister.

Mr. al-Alusi said Mr. Jaafari understood that he cannot strain too far from the American position of fighting terrorists in Iraq. “I think he will be willing to say ‘no’ to Iran when the time comes,” he said. “He cannot stray far from the American position.”

Mr. Jaafari angered Sunnis last year when he visited Tehran and announced the good intentions of Iraq’s neighbor and the strong friendship between the two countries. But in November, Mr. Jaafari also ordered an investigation into reports that Shiite militias were summarily executing Sunni Arab civilians and bringing some suspected terrorists to a secret Interior Ministry facility in Baghdad where dead bodies were found by American soldiers with clear evidence they had been tortured.

Many Sunni and Kurdish leaders have suspected the hand of the Iranians in the violent excesses of the Shiite militias, two of whom – the Badr Brigade and the military arm of Mr. Jaafari’s Dawa Party – were trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corp. In November the leader of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, boasted to reporters that the West failed to stop the export of revolution to Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, and Iraq.

Mr. al-Alusi said General Safavi’s officers were responsible for recent terror activity around the holy city of Najaf. “Who has the real control in Basra?” he asked. “The reality is that this is the Iranian-controlled insurgents. In the last two weeks, there were 50 small bombs between Kufa and Najaf. Who is in a position to do that? Only people part of the Shiite parties, there is no one who has this power but Iranian intelligence.”

The reaction from Sunni politicians to the nomination of Mr. Jaafari was critical but tempered. The head of the National Dialogue Front, Saleh al-Mutlak, told Reuters that Jaafari should show he was capable of taking tough decisions as Iraq’s prime minister. “If he adopts the same policy as he did, we will not support him. He was controlled by the Shiite alliance and his government did nothing for Iraqis,” Mr. al-Mutlak said. “We want him to form an Iraqi national government that includes all parties.”