Iraq to get unity government

By Mariam Karouny and Fredrik Dahl

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi leaders have agreed on a national
unity government to be presented to parliament on Saturday,
officials said, despite failure to reach a compromise on the
sensitive defense and interior ministry portfolios.

“The government will be announced tomorrow,” a senior aide
to Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki told Reuters late on
Friday after weeks of wrangling between rival ethnic and
religious groups jockeying for power in postwar Iraq.

The agreement on a grand coalition of Shi’ites, minority
Sunni Arabs and Kurds, which the United States counts on to
halt a slide toward civil war, signaled an end to months of
political deadlock following December’s elections.

The formation of Iraq’s first full-term government since
the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 will be hailed as major progress
in Washington and London, which are keen to start drawing down
their combined 140,000 troops in Iraq.

But analysts cautioned that while a government encompassing
Iraq’s main rival groups was a key step forward, that may have
been the relatively easy part in a country where people risk
their lives by just venturing outside their homes.

Maliki’s aide said parties had given themselves a week to
find common ground also on the interior and defense posts,
crucial jobs for quelling bloodshed plaguing the country three
year’s after U.S. forces invaded to topple Saddam Hussein.

Maliki, a Shi’ite Islamist, would, in the meantime, take
charge of the Interior Ministry while Vice President Tareq
al-Hashemi, a Sunni, would head the Defense Ministry, he said.

Parliament is scheduled to meet on Saturday to approve the
government, a vote largely seen as a formality as most of the
assembly’s parties would be represented in the new cabinet.

DEATH SQUADS

Nuclear scientist and Maliki’s fellow Shi’ite Islamist
Hussain al-Shahristani will become oil minister, an important
job for boosting Iraq’s economy, political sources said.

Iraq boasts the world’s third largest oil reserves. But the
the sector, crippled by decades of war, sanctions and
under-investment, has lurched from crisis to crisis since 2003.

Outgoing Interior Minister Bayan Jabor, whose time in
office has been marred by accusations of police death squads,
will move to head the finance ministry. Hoshiyar Zebari, a
Kurd, remains at the helm of the foreign ministry.

Kurdish outgoing Planning Minister Barham Saleh and Salem
al-Zobaie, a Sunni politician, were confirmed as Maliki’s
deputy prime ministers while followers of anti-American Shi’ite
cleric Moqtada al-Sadr appeared to have secured at least three
seats.

Maliki, whose no-nonsense approach and inclusive discourse
have won him grudging respect from rivals, faces huge
challenges in tackling violence and rebuilding the economy.

Many Iraqis complain that daily life has worsened since
Saddam Hussein’s ouster, with a dearth of jobs and frequent
power and water cuts. Four million people now live in extreme
poverty, said a U.N.-backed Iraqi study released this month.

Analyst Joost Hiltermann said stability in Iraq apart from
a unity government also required the revision of a constitution
approved in a referendum last year and the building of security
forces free of sectarian and ethnic agendas.

The once-dominant Sunni minority fears the constitution as
it stands, by giving Iraq’s regions more powers, would deprive
them of revenue from oil-rich southern and northern areas
dominated by majority Shi’ites and Kurds.

“I think (forming the government) is the easiest to
accomplish,” said Hiltermann, of the International Crisis Group
think-tank.

CIVIL WAR FEARS

Sectarian violence has soared after the bombing of a
Shi’ite shrine in the city of Samarra in February, with
hundreds of people killed every month in the capital, Baghdad,
alone, sparking fears of full-blown communal conflict.

In Baghdad, two civilians were killed in clashes between
police commandos and insurgents in the Jihad District.

The United States’ 133,000 troops in Iraq also suffer daily
casualties. One soldier was seriously wounded when his vehicle
struck a bomb in Baghdad on Friday, a day after a similar
attack near the capital killed four soldiers and an Iraqi
interpreter.

In Dubai, the family of a United Arab Emirates diplomat
kidnapped in Iraq said they had heard he would be freed on
Friday but they had no official word of his release, Arab
television stations reported.

The UAE said its charge d’affaires in Iraq had flown home
to report on the abduction. His recall was a main demand raised
by the group who kidnapped the diplomat, Naji al-Noaimi, in
Baghdad on Tuesday.

Hundreds of foreigners, including Arab diplomats and other
embassy workers, and thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped in
the last three years. Many are freed after a ransom is paid.

(Additional reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia, Alastair
Macdonald and Omar al-Ibadi in Baghdad, Heba Kandil in Dubai))