BAGHDAD, 26 April 2006 — Iraqi prime minister-designate Jawad Al-Maliki said yesterday that he expected to have his Cabinet lineup ready for approval in two weeks as rebels killed at least 15 people across Iraq. Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush yesterday termed Iraq’s latest political developments as progress in the war on terror.
An optimistic Maliki told state television that the new Cabinet would be ready in 15 days. “I believe that in the next 15 days we can have a new government and present it to Parliament,” he said amid concern a four-month power vacuum has fanned insurgent violence.
Maliki, whose nomination in place of outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari cleared the way for an end to the protracted deadlock, said agreements reached during negotiations over his own candidacy would speed up the formation of a national unity government. “We have prior agreements ... that makes our work easier,” he said.
As Maliki, a Shiite conservative, went about assembling the next Cabinet, representatives of Iraq’s other ethnic and religious groups were quick to stake their claims to ministerial jobs. Prominent Kurdish MP Mahmoud Othman told AFP he expected the Kurds to be assigned six of Iraq’s 30 ministries, including the foreign affairs portfolio they held in the outgoing government. “If not, we want either the oil or finance ministry,” Othman said, adding that the Kurds were not asking for security posts.
The main Sunni parliamentary bloc, the National Concord Front, downplayed any perceived progress, saying it “was still premature to talk about ministries.” “But what we want is a broad coalition that is made up representatives from even non-parliamentary groups,” said Zhafer Al-Ani, spokesman for the Front, which has 44 seats in the 275-member assembly. A large role for Sunni Arabs in the next government is seen as crucial to weaning away Iraq’s rulers under Saddam Hussein from the long-running anti-US insurgency.
As many as 15 people were killed yesterday in violence that highlighted the urgency of forming a new government. In the day’s deadliest attack, six employees of MTC Atheer, an Iraqi mobile telephone company, were shot dead west of the holy city of Karbala. Maj. Mahdi Saleh of Kerbala’s crime department said the killings occurred at a town called Nakhib, 300 kilometers west of Kerbala.
In another brutal attack, gunmen killed a man and his 10-year-old daughter in the restive city of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, while a judge, Ibrahim Malik Hindawi, was shot dead in Baghdad. The latest violence follows Monday’s seven car bombings and numerous shootings in Baghdad that left 20 people dead and about 100 wounded.
The Defense Ministry said eight people were arrested in a Baghdad mosque yesterday on suspicion of involvement in the car bombings. The violence coincided with an announcement from Iraq’s Defense Ministry announced that at least 123 people were killed and 153 wounded in rebel attacks last week.
