News 2005

Iraq PM set to unveil Cabinet
April 26, 2005

By Agence France-Presse:

Iraq's Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim Jaafari was finally poised to unveil a Cabinet on Tuesday more than 12 weeks after historic elections amid mounting international impatience at the protracted political deadlock.

"Jaafari will unveil his Cabinet list to the (United Iraqi) Alliance within the hour," said Haytham al-Husseini, spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the main factions that make up the election-winning Shiite bloc.

"The Government is expected to be announced within hours", once it has been formally approved by alliance leaders, Husseini told the agency.

Parliament would later be asked to approve the line-up.

In addition to the Shiite bloc and the main Kurdish alliance, the Cabinet was expected to include representatives of the Sunni Arab minority, despite its tiny representation in parliament,
politicians said.

Sunnis dominated Saddam Hussein's regime and all previous Iraqi governments but won just 17 seats in Parliament after largely boycotting January's election.

But supporters of outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular pro-Western Shiite, were not expected to participate in the new Government after Jaafari rejected their terms.

The majority Shiites, who took 146 of Parliament's 275 seats, were expected to get 17 Cabinet seats. The Kurds, who have 77 MPs, were expected to get eight, and the Sunni Arabs, six.

The small Christian and Turkmen minorities were expected to get one ministry each.

Word that an announcement was finally imminent after several false starts in recent days came after Washington expressed fear that the continuing deadlock was squandering the momentum created by the successful election.

"I think everybody believes that the Iraqi people now deserve a Government, given that they took (a) risk to vote," said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"We've had opportunities to represent those views to a number of Iraqi leaders," she said. "And we're going to continue to say that it is important to keep momentum in the political process."

Iraqi police, meanwhile, hailed a major coup against Sunni Arab insurgents, announcing the arrest of 305 suspects, including 11 from other Arab countries.

"Among them, 85 admitted to carrying out terrorist attacks and 11 were foreigners from Arab countries, including Egyptians, Palestinians and Sudanese," Brigadier General Abdul Hanin al-Imara told the agency.

The detainees, some of whom were arrested in the town of Madain, scene of an alleged mass hostage-taking of Shiite residents earlier this month, included suspected members of the Al-Qaeda-linked Army of Ansar al-Sunna, the general, said.

The militant group, which has released videotape of a number of executions of foreign hostages in the past, posted a statement on the Internet on Tuesday saying that it had kidnapped six Sudanese.

In other violence, one Iraqi civilian was killed and another wounded late on Monday in a roadside bombing targetting a military convoy in Zuwiyah, 230 kilometers (145 miles) north of Baghdad, police captain Hazim Aswad said.

On Tuesday, a sniper killed the driver of an oil tanker in a joint Iraqi-US convoy near Farhatiyah some 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Baghdad, Lieutenant Colonel Hameed Ahmed said.

Two Iraqi soldiers were also wounded in separate attacks nearby, security sources said.

Just north of the capital, seven members of the same family were wounded in a roadside bombing in the town of Dujail.

In Washington, commanders announced that a military inquiry had found that US soldiers, who killed an Italian intelligence agent and wounded a hostage he was bringing to safety last month, were "not culpable".

Italy has not accepted the US findings, a military official acknowledged, and the former hostage -- journalist Giuliana Sgrena -- condemned them as a "slap in the face".

In Berlin, a US envoy suggested Germany might play a role in helping Iraq's new Parliament draft a permanent Constitution.

The State Department's coordinator for Iraq policy, Richard Jones, said Germany's federal system could serve as a model for Iraq.

"I think Germany could potentially play a constructive role in helping the Iraqis draft the constitution because of your federal structure," he told reporters

Source Link: http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1337883,001300180001.htm