Baghdad, Iraq ? Iyad Allawi’s selection as Iraqi prime minister gives Washington a major policy success after a series of embarrassing and costly setbacks. The U.S.-backed Shiite politician started his duties right away, consulting Saturday with the U.N. special envoy to pick his 26-member Cabinet, officials said.

He also must act fast to address the issue worrying Iraqis most: the nation’s lack of security.

His supporters on the Iraqi Governing Council, who chose him for the top post Friday, and critics agree that Allawi has the resolve and ruthlessness to handle Iraq’s security crisis — including a Sunni insurgency in Baghdad and areas north and west, a Shiite revolt in central and southern Iraq, and a series of suicide bombings that have killed hundreds.

“Iyad Allawi certainly has the potential for brutality,” said Abbas al-Robai, a senior aide of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia has been battling American and other coalition troops since April in Baghdad and across southern and central Iraq.

Allawi, a 58-year-old neurologist described by White House spokesman Scott McClellan as “a fine and capable leader,” could be the best-placed Iraqi to help rescue a Bush administration whose Iraq policy has been thrown into turmoil by the security crisis.

His contacts in Saddam Hussein’s former army are extensive and date back to 1990 when he set up the Iraqi National Accord, an opposition group that attracted scores of senior army officers who fled Saddam’s regime and engineered a failed coup attempt in 1996.

Allawi has been courted by the CIA since setting up the group, and his Washington backers will now look to him to recruit the best of the former Iraqi officer corps to lead the new, U.S.-trained Iraqi military. That force will gradually assume responsibility for security after the U.S.-led coalition hands over power June 30.

The groundwork for Allawi, a former member of Saddam’s Baath party, to start the recruitment drive for the new army already is in place.

L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, has recently relaxed the policy barring the three top tiers of Baath party hierarchy from joining the military or the government. That meant any officer from the rank of colonel and above could not serve in the new army.

“I see him as a good man and a loyal son of Iraq,” Governing Council member Nasser Kamel al-Chaderchi said of Allawi. “He is known for his ability to make decisions quickly and he also is decisive.”

Despite those attributes, Allawi’s past associations — particularly with the CIA and British intelligence — could be a serious liability.

“Anyone who sold himself to the CIA is not fit to be the leader of the Iraqi government,” said Abdul-Majeed Abdul-Rahman, an engineer from Baghdad who, like most Iraqis, nurtures a deep distrust of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council.

Sheik Raid al-Saadi, the Friday preacher at Baghdad’s Kazimiyah shrine, one of Iraq’s holiest Shiite sites, said, “He has been appointed by the Americans and will serve the interests of the Americans.”