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Iraq to get unity government

Posted on: Friday, 19 May 2006, 16:47 CDT

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))

Source: REUTERS

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