BAGHDAD, 9 April 2005 — Snipers yesterday killed three clerics in fresh violence as Iraq’s newly appointed premier began the process of building a Cabinet he said must include efficient technocrats and nationalists with a “clean history”.
Despite the weeks of delay and bickering in nominating Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, Washington expressed hope Iraq’s political calendar providing for a permanent constitution and definitive elections by the end of 2005 would be respected.
Jaafari said Thursday after his appointment by new President Jalal Talabani and his two deputies that he would work to form a government within two weeks, although he theoretically has a month to do so.
“The ministries need efficient technocrats, nationalists with a good and clean history and team players who are comfortable working within a diverse setting,” Jaafari told reporters. He promised “to fight corruption and institute administrative reforms” after several members of his United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) accused the outgoing government of Iyad Allawi of breaking the law and hiring senior members of the banned Baath party of ousted leader Saddam Hussein. Parliament is expected to vote tomorrow on a UIA motion to rebuke and sanction Allawi’s government.
Jaafari refused to go into details over the government line-up but one of his senior aides Jawad Al-Maliki said a quarter of the 30 or so Cabinet posts will go to women.
Maliki said the UIA will have the important ministries of finance, interior and oil.
He said the Kurdish coalition partners will retain the Foreign Ministry now headed by Hoshyar Zebari and “may get the Planning Ministry as a consolation for oil which they had been fighting to clinch.”
The Sunnis, who largely boycotted the elections but are being assiduously courted by both sides, will get at least six ministries, including defense, he said.
Meanwhile, three Shiite clerics were killed by sniper fire on the southern approaches of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.
The men where coming from the overwhelmingly Shiite south to take part in a demonstration in the capital called for today by Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr when they were shot in Dura, the official said.
A Turkish driver meanwhile died of wounds suffered in an attack on his convoy in northern Iraq late Thursday that wounded six others traveling with him, police said.
In the main southern city of Basra, three masked men shot dead an officer in the new Iraqi Army as he was dining Thursday, an army spokesman said.
The same night, four US soldiers were wounded in the northern town of Shurgat when insurgents hurled a hand grenade at them, a US military statement said.
Another US military statement yesterday said a US Marine died two days ago in a vehicle accident during combat operations in the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah, west of the capital.
Also, a US soldier was killed by a bomb in northern Iraq yesterday, the US Army said.
The soldier was killed around noon when a homemade bomb exploded near Hawijah, in Kirkuk province, a statement said without providing further details.
— With input from agencies
