BAGHDAD: Iraq’s main Sunni Arab bloc rejoined the Shiite-led government yesterday in a breakthrough for national reconciliation after Parliament approved its candidates for several vacant ministerial posts.
Getting the Accordance Front to return after it quit a year ago in a row over power sharing has been seen as key to healing divisions between majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs.
Sunni Arabs have little voice in the current Cabinet, which is dominated by Shiites and ethnic Kurds.
“Today, Parliament voted to accept our candidates... This means the Accordance Front has officially returned to the government,” a senior lawmaker in the bloc, Salim Al-Jubouri, said after the vote.
Jubouri, who is also the bloc’s spokesman, said the Front’s approved candidates would attend the next Cabinet meeting.
Parliament questioned candidates for 10 vacant Cabinet jobs, including five ministries and a deputy prime ministerial post that had previously been allocated to the Accordance Front. The other portfolios were left largely vacant when separate Shiite and secular factions quit Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s government last year. They will be filled by politicians from other parties.
Al-Maliki had earlier approved the names for all the posts, which were not for any key security or economic positions. Rafie Al-Esawi from the Front was approved as one of Iraq’s two deputy prime ministers. Iraq’s other deputy prime minister is Barham Salih, a prominent Kurd.
The Front pulled out of Maliki’s Cabinet in August last year, demanding a greater say in security policies as well as the release of mainly Sunni Arab detainees.
British troops
Making an unannounced visit to Baghdad, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said yesterday he wanted to reduce British troop levels in Iraq but refused to set any timetable for their departure.
Britain sent 45,000 troops to take part in the 2003 US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, but only some 4,000 remain at an airport near the southern city of Basra where they are training Iraqi security forces.
“It’s certainly our intention that we reduce our troop numbers but I’m not going to give an artificial timetable for the moment,” Brown told reporters traveling with him after meeting Al-Maliki.
