WASHINGTON – The race for Iraqi prime minister has narrowed to two candidates who are now vying for the precious endorsement of the largest voting bloc in the new transitional national assembly.

A spokesman in Baghdad for the United Iraqi Alliance announced yesterday that the current finance minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, was withdrawing his name from consideration for the top post in the new government. That leaves the head of one faction of the Dawa party, Ibrahim Jafari, and the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, as the remaining candidates in the race for prime minister.

In a telephone interview from Baghdad yesterday, Mr. Chalabi said he had the support of 73 of the 140 legislators in the UIA. “I believe the right choice will be made by the coalition. I’ve been meeting with members of the new assembly and political leaders to discuss the future developments of this process,” he said.

Mr. Jafari, who in June was appointed as one of Iraq’s two vice presidents, is said to have garnered the support of the rival to his Dawa party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The sixth-ranking member of SCIRI, Humam Hamoudi, who is a spokesman for the UIA, yesterday told the Associate Press that Mr. Jafari had emerged as the front-runner.

Members of the UIA are scheduled to meet today and tomorrow in Baghdad in an attempt to reach a consensus on the candidate they will endorse for prime minister. While the UIA candidate for prime minister is not guaranteed the position, it is likely that the endorsement will be enough because the slate controls a little more than 50% of the 275-member assembly. Under the transitional administrative law, the new assembly must elect a president and two vice presidents. This “presidential council” will then be asked to choose by consensus the new prime minister. If the three-person council cannot agree on a candidate, a vote is to be taken again in the assembly, where the new prime minister must gain a two-thirds majority.

The dealing and maneuvering in the run-up to the UIA meetings recall the politics that nearly split apart the alliance in December, when the final list of candidates for the UIA was forged. In those negotiations the biggest issues were the presence of independent candidates on the list, as opposed to members of the major parties, and whether the UIA would take a position on the role of Islam in the new Iraq. In the end Mr. Chalabi secured seats for many of the independent candidates who are now supporting him.

Mr. Jafari, a Western-educated doctor, has recently cast himself in a more secular light. In an interview yesterday with the Associated Press, he stressed that he believed Islam should be one of the “main sources of legislation,” a distinct reversal from his blustery protests of the transitional administrative law, when he said his religion should be the only source of Iraqi law. He also said that his top priority would be fighting the insurgency in Iraq, and signaled that he would not be asking American soldiers to leave the country.

While Mr. Jafari is looking like the favorite of the two largest Shiite parties, the Kurdish slate of candidates, which will control 26% of the seats in the new assembly, may still veto the candidacy of the candidate whose party’s name means “Islamic Call.” The president of the Washington Kurdish Institute, Najmaldin Karim, who has been in regular contact with the two Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq in recent days, told the Sun that Mr. Jafari would need to meet certain conditions if he was to gain the endorsement of the Kurds.

“I think the Kurdish position on the next prime minister will be critical,” he said. He said that the Kurdish slate expected to control the presidency of the three-person council that will choose the prime minister. So far, the top candidate for president of Iraq is the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Jalal Talabani.

Mr. Karim added, “The next prime minister has to meet certain criteria. That is accepting federalism. The next prime minister has to clearly agree that article 58 will be implemented, which is the process of reversing the Arabization and ethnic cleansing in areas such as Kirkuk. And the prime minister will have to accept separation of religion from state. If Jafari meets those criteria, he will be acceptable. If he does not come out and say these things, we will veto him. Chalabi in the past has said he accepts these positions and agrees with them.”

In his interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Jafari said he accepted the idea of federalism, but he stressed, “‘Federalism doesn’t mean separation from the nation state.”

Last year, Kurdish civil society organizations presented the United Nations with a petition calling for an independent Kurdistan.

A former adviser to the coalition provisional authority, Michael Rubin, told the Sun, “If anyone is an Iranian spy or agent of influence for Iran, it is Jafari. Jafari talks the talk of democracy, but in his heart he believes that Ayatollah Khomeini was too liberal. Jafari has had trouble keeping his own party together, he might not be the ideal candidate to form the alliance necessary to keep Iraq together.” Mr. Rubin is now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Chalabi has also in the past been accused of having too close a relationship with Iran’s hard-liners, most recently last spring when government officials anonymously leaked charges that he passed signal intelligence to Iran’s revolutionary guard. At the time, Mr. Chalabi asked to appear before Congress to clear his name. In December, Mr. Chalabi gave a press conference in Tehran during which he said the Iraqi government would not emulate the Iranian style political system that gave clerics unaccountable political authority. He has also said in that press conference that Iran should not interfere in Iraqi politics.

Written off last spring by the White House, Mr. Chalabi in recent weeks has met with senior officials from the American embassy in Baghdad. A source close to the White House told the Sun yesterday the president in the last week “issued a clear directive that we are not to interfere with the Iraqis as they make their own decisions in forming the government.” A senior administration official confirmed this account to the Sun. “This process is driven by Iraqis and dictated by Iraqis, the resulting outcome will be an Iraqi outcome,” the official said. “If Chalabi gets it, Chalabi it will be.”