Iraq's prime minister-designate said Tuesday the main
stumbling blocks to forming a new Cabinet have been overcome and he expects to
present his team to parliament for approval by the end of the week.
Iraq's Prime Minister-designate Nouri
al-Maliki talks to reporters during a news conference in Baghdad, Tuesday,
May 9, 2006. Al-Maliki said main stumbling blocks to forming a new Cabinet
have been overcome and he expects to present his team to parliament for
approval by the end of the week. [AP] |
Nouri al-Maliki said representatives of the country's political parties had
agreed on who will head the main posts and that just a few ministries remain
unfilled. Discussions were still under way on the nominees for the oil, trade
and transportation ministries, he said.
The incoming prime minister did not say who would get the key ministries of
interior, which controls police, and defense, which runs the army. U.S. and
British officials have insisted those posts go to people without ties to
sectarian militias, believed responsible for many of the revenge killings of
Sunnis and Shiites.
"The direction we took, and which was agreed upon by the political groups,
was that the two who will occupy these posts be independent and unaffiliated
with a party or a militia," he said at a news conference.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, said he hoped to present the Cabinet to parliament by
the end of the week. Parliament must approve each minister by a majority vote.
Since he was nominated prime minister last month, Al-Maliki has struggled to
complete the final step in establishing the new Iraqi government.
U.S. officials hope the formation of a unity government will help calm
sectarian tensions, lure Sunni Arabs away from the insurgency and eventually
allow the withdrawal of some American forces.
But the process has been plagued by ethnic and sectarian tension and deadly
attacks by insurgents, and al-Maliki has been working to balance the conflicting
interests of Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish legislators.
The Interior Ministry, currently headed by Bayan Jabr, a Shiite, has come
under criticism from Sunnis who say that Shiite "death squads" are routinely
targeting their community.
Sunni Arabs also have jockeyed for key ministries such as oil and finance.
But those posts had largely been allocated to the United Iraqi Alliance, the
Shiite bloc with the largest number of seats in the parliament.
As for the prominent Foreign Ministry, lawmakers have repeatedly said that
this portfolio will remain in the hands of the Kurds, who also hold the
presidency.
Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the killing of an
Iraqi reporter and a media worker whose bodies were discovered south of Baghdad
on Monday. Violence continued in the volatile area with the discovery of the
headless corpses of three Iraqi soldiers floating in the Tigris River,
apparently the latest victims of death squads that had kidnapped and killed
hundreds of Sunnis and Shiites in recent months.
Laith al-Dulaimi, a reporter for the privately owned TV station Al-Nahrain,
and Muazaz Ahmed Barood, a telephone operator for the station, were kidnapped by
men disguised as police officers while driving home to Madain, a town 12 miles
southeast of Baghdad, said Abdulkarim al-Mehdawi, the station's general manager.
Their bodies were discovered at al-Wihda district, 20 miles south of Baghdad.
Both men, in their late 20s, had been shot in the chest, al-Mehdawi said.
In the last year alone, at least 35 Iraqis have been killed in and around
Madain, a tense Shiite-Sunni area, according to an Associated Press count.
"We are saddened by the loss of our colleagues Laith al-Dulaimi and Muazaz
Barood," said Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect
Journalists. "Their senseless murder reflects the continuing dangers for
journalists working in Iraq.
Al-Dulaimi became a reporter for Al-Nahrain four months ago. Barood had been
working at the station since it was established just over a year and a half ago.
Al-Mehdawi told the committee that neither the station nor the journalists
had ever received threats, and the motive behind the killings was unclear.
The New York-based organization said 69 journalists and 25 media support
workers have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, making it
the deadliest conflict for the media in recent history.
