Iraq's new cabinet almost ready: Maliki
Iraq's prime minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki has said that the line-up for country's first permanent government of the post-Saddam era was almost ready, after months of tortuous negotiations.
"We will finalise the cabinet today or tomorrow and will present the new government to the parliament this week," he told reporters.
Iraq's rival political factions have been wrangling since the December election over the shape of a new national unity government which it is hoped will help quell raging sectarian violence and rein in the Sunni-led insurgency.
"This is a government of all Iraqis and not of one sect," Maliki said Tuesday. "Iraqis have suffered enough under the Saddam Hussein regime and they now need a strong unity government."
Maliki said the cabinet was "90 percent" ready and the candidates for the heads of the five key ministries -- interior, defense, oil, finance and foreign affairs -- had been finalised.
"The candidates for the interior and defense ministries are independents and not from any major political party, nor do they have any links with any militias," Maliki said.
However, he did not name the candidates saying "we will announce the entire cabinet together."
Iraq's interior ministry, led by Shiite Bayan Jabr Solagh, has been accused of operating death squads which have engaged in extra-judicial killings of Sunni Arabs.
Solagh himself is a member of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a hardline Shiite party which operates a well-organised militia, the Badr Brigade.
Iraq's numerous Shiite militias have been accused of killing Sunni Arabs in the sectarian bloodshed that has killed hundreds of people since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in February.
Maliki, of the Shiite Dawa Party, was selected last month after Sunni Arab and Kurdish groups opposed outgoing premier Ibrahim Jaafari staying in office.
"I will meet some more candidates for other ministries in these two days and I have the confidence to solve the remaining issues and go to the parliament," he said.
Maliki had said he would form a government of national unity by May 10, although under the constitution, he has until May 21 to unveil his lineup.
The formation of the government is the latest stage in Iraq's political transition since the ousting of Saddam in April 2003 by US-led forces.
The United States is hoping that a broad-based government will help curb the daily bloodshed and pave the way for the withdrawal of its 132,000 troops stationed in the country.
Maliki said he was opening the doors for armed rebel groups to join the political process.
"If there are people who carried weapons to fight the political process but do not have blood of innocent Iraqis on their hands, I am ready to talk to them and ask them to surrender their weapons and invite them to join the political process."
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has held a series of dialogues over the past few months with seven armed groups which have been fighting the US-led occupation of Iraq.
Maliki said he was not party to the Talabani talks but added: "I am now ready to talk such groups."
Armed groups have exploited the political vacuum since the December 15 election, the second election for parliament since Saddam was toppled but the first for a permanent government.
On Tuesday four people were killed across Iraq, while six mutilated bodies were found including three beheaded corpses of Iraqi army soldiers, security officials said.
Among those killed were two civilians in a roadside bomb attack against a patrol of Facility Protection Service (FPS), a special security unit tasked with guarding ministry buildings and power stations.
Four members of the patrol were also wounded in the Baghdad attack.
A Sunni cleric, Raed Mohammed al-Dulaimi, was also killed in southern Baghdad. The Iraqi Islamic Party said Dulaimi was the 150th Sunni cleric to be killed in Iraq since 2003. An Iraqi army soldier was also killed in an attack.
Meanwhile, two delivery men working for an Iraqi army catering service company were kidnapped in northern Iraq on a road between Tikrit and Ouja, the native village of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
AFP
