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Iraq PM eyes unity government in day or two

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 May 2006, 09:01 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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