Maliki: Iraq's new cabinet almost ready

Middle East Online ^ | 2006 May 9 | Kamal Taha

[Wiz]

Iraq's prime minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki said Tuesday that the line-up for country's first permanent government of the post-Saddam era was almost ready, after months of tortuous negotiations.

"We will finalise the cabinet today or tomorrow and will present the new government to the parliament this week," he told reporters.

Iraq's rival political factions have been wrangling since the December election over the shape of a new national unity government which it is hoped will help quell raging sectarian violence and rein in the Sunni-led insurgency.

"This is a government of all Iraqis and not of one sect," Maliki said. "Iraqis have suffered enough under the Saddam Hussein regime and they now need a strong unity government."

Maliki said the cabinet was "90 percent" ready and the candidates for the heads of the five key ministries - interior, defense, oil, finance and foreign affairs - had been finalised.

"The candidates for the interior and defense ministries are independents and not from any major political party, nor do they have any links with any militias," Maliki said.

Iraq's interior ministry, currently led by Bayan Jabr Solagh, a Shiite, has been accused of operating death squads which have engaged in extra-judicial killings of Sunni Arabs.

Solagh himself is a member of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a hardline Shiite party which operates a well-organised militia, the Badr Brigade.

[Wiz]

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