Iraq PM eyes unity government in day or two

By Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Prime Minister-designate Nuri al
-Maliki said on Tuesday he hoped to form in the next two days
Iraq’s first full-term government since Saddam Hussein was
toppled, after an agreement to fill key posts with
independents.

But senior negotiators said that there was still much hard
bargaining going on with stiff competition for key posts.

Ending five months of stalemate since a December election,
Maliki, a Shi’ite Muslim, said he expected to assemble “today
or tomorrow” a government of national unity which Washington
sees as the best hope to avert a sectarian civil war.

“We have achieved much and there is little left to do,”
Maliki, from the ruling Shi’ite Alliance, told a news
conference.

“We have done 90 percent,” he said. “But I want to give
more time to the leaders (of political blocs) to finish what is
left.”

The apparent breakthrough, following heavy pressure from
the United States, comes after rival Shi’ite, Kurdish and Sunni
groups agreed to fill the sensitive ministries of interior and
defense with figures free of ties with militias, Maliki said.

Despite Maliki’s optimistic assessment, efforts to form
Iraq’s first full government since 2003 have bogged down in the
past in bargaining among the main ethnic and sectarian
factions.

Under a constitutional deadline, Maliki has until May 22 to
present a cabinet to parliament, which is to sit on Wednesday.

Among those ministry posts still undecided were oil, trade
and transport — key to rebuilding Iraq’s crippled economy.

“There is still discussion about the oil ministry. There is
a dispute. It may be finished today. There are also disputes
over the trade and transport ministries,” Maliki said.

A senior negotiator said an agreement on the few ministries
left could be more complicated than Maliki said.

“We have too many names for the jobs left, but each
candidate is facing objection from one of the other lists,” he
said.

Though seen as a Shi’ite hawk when named last month, Maliki
insisted he was ready to reach out to Sunni rebels who laid
down their arms and joined the U.S.-backed political process.

BODIES IN THE TIGRIS

The United States hopes the formation of a broad-based
government will help quell a Sunni Arab insurgency and allow it
to begin withdrawing its 133,000 troops in Iraq. At least 2,420
American soldiers have been killed in the Iraq war.

In fresh violence, police on Tuesday retrieved from the
Tigris river south of Baghdad 11 bodies, nine of which were
beheaded, including a 10-year-old boy. It said all of them were
bound and had been killed four or five days ago. Seven of the
victims wore Iraqi security forces uniforms.

The motives behind the killings were not clear but
sectarian bloodshed has forced tens of thousands of people to
flee their homes. The dumping of bodies — many of them bearing
signs of torture — is a common feature in Iraq.

A key issue in forming the government against the
background of sectarian violence among rival militias and rebel
groups has been control of the defense and interior ministries.

Maliki said all the parliamentary blocs involved in the
negotiations had agreed that these two posts should go to
individuals not associated with parties running armed wings.

This would suggest that Interior Minister Bayan Jabor is
likely to go. A member of the SCIRI Shi’ite Islamist party
which controls the armed Badr movement, Jabor has been accused
of condoning police death squads. Although he denies it, the
U.S. ambassador has made clear Washington wants him out of his
job.

Maliki said the Alliance, which has fought hard to keep
control of the Interior Ministry, hoped to nominate its
candidate for the post later in the day. Though nominated by
the bloc, the candidate would apparently be seen as an
independent.

Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi, a Sunni independent, is
more low key but negotiators say he is unlikely to keep his
post.

Locked in a battle for public opinion as much as in combat
with the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the U.S. military published
on Monday what it said was a captured al Qaeda document that it
said showed the Sunni Islamist guerrillas recognized that they
were weak and unpopular in Baghdad.

A translation of the undated, three-page document, whose
authenticity could not be independently assessed, suggested al
Qaeda was reviewing tactics in the city, currently focused on
car bombs and other guerrilla tactics, and proposing improving
its military capabilities to hold territory in any civil war.

(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami, Mussab Al-Khairalla,
Alastair Macdonald, Omar al-Ibadi, Waleed Ibrahim and Ibon
Villelabeitia in Baghdad)