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Iraqi Lawmakers End Months of Deadlock
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer 37 minutes ago
Iraq's president formally designated Shiite politician Jawad al-Maliki to form a new government Saturday, starting a process aimed at healing ethnic and religious wounds and pulling the nation out of insurgency and sectarian strife.
The move ends months of political deadlock among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds that threatened to drag the nation into civil war. Al-Maliki has 30 days to present his Cabinet to parliament for approval.
Parliament elected President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to a second term and gave the post of parliament speaker to Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab. Al-Mashhadani's two deputies were to be Khalid al-Attiyah, a Shiite, and Aref Tayfour, a Kurd.
The tough-talking al-Maliki was nominated by the Shiites on Friday after outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari gave up his bid for another term. Al-Jaafari's attempt to stay in office was adamantly opposed by Sunnis and Kurds, causing a monthslong deadlock while the country's security crisis worsened in the wake of December's election.
U.S. and Iraqi officials hope that a national unity government representing Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds will be able to quell both the Sunni-led insurgency and bloody Shiite-Sunni violence that has raged during the political uncertainty. If it succeeds, it could enable the U.S. to begin withdrawing its 133,000 troops.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Bush administration is hopeful that the latest political developments in Iraq will lead to significant progress in forming a permanent government.
"We hope to see good progress in the coming days," McClellan told reporters traveling with President Bush to California. "We'll be watching."
Suspected insurgents, meanwhile, set off two bombs in a public market in central Iraq, killing at least two Iraqis and wounding 17. The second blast was timed to hit emergency crews arriving at the scene.
The first bomb exploded at 7:30 a.m. in the middle of Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, causing a large fire, police said.
When fire engines arrived, the second bomb went off, killing a firefighter and a civilian, and wounding 17 civilians, police said.
The bullet-ridden bodies of 10 Iraqis were found in and around Baghdad, many blindfolded with their hands and legs bound in rope. Some appeared to have been tortured, and one had been decapitated, police said.
Police also found a body with signs of torture floating in the Tigris River in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, said Hadi al-Ittabi, an employee of the Kut Forensic Center.
In Baghdad, gunmen in a speeding car sprayed a police patrol with machine-gun fire, killing one officer, police said. Gunmen killed a civilian riding in a car, and a roadside bomb wounded two policemen, police said.
On Friday, at least 22 Iraqis were killed, including six in a car bombing in Tal Afar in western Iraq and six off-duty Iraqi soldiers slain in Beiji in northern Iraq, police said.
An Australian soldier shot himself in the head in a "tragic accident" inside Baghdad's Green Zone housing the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government buildings, Australian defense officials said Saturday.
He was the Australian military's first casualty since the Iraq war began in 2003. Last year, an Australian-British citizen serving in Britain's Royal Air Force was killed.
Al-Maliki has a reputation as a hard-line, outspoken defender of the Shiite stance — raising questions over whether he will be able to negotiate the delicate sectarian balancing act.
From exile in Syria in the 1980s and 1990s, he directed Dawa guerrillas fighting Saddam Hussein's regime. Since returning home after Saddam's fall, he has been a prominent member of the commission purging former Baath Party officials from the military and government.
Sunni Arabs, who made up the backbone of Saddam's ousted party, deeply resent the commission.
Al-Maliki also was a tough negotiator in drawn-out deliberations over the new constitution passed last year despite Sunni Arab objections. He resisted U.S. efforts to put more Sunnis on the drafting committee as well as Sunni efforts to water down provisions giving Shiites and Kurds the power to form semiautonomous mini-states in the north and south.
Sunnis and Kurds blamed the rise of sectarian tensions on al-Jaafari, saying he failed to rein in Shiite militias and Interior Ministry commandos, accused by the Sunnis of harboring death squads. Those parties refused to join any government headed by al-Jaafari.
Al-Jaafari, prime minister since April 2005, was nominated by the alliance for a second term in February by a one-vote margin, relying on support from radical, anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Jaafari had stalwartly rejected pressure to give up the post until Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, sent word that he should go. On Thursday, al-Jaafari gave the alliance the go-ahead to pick a new nominee.
The new prime minister nominee will now face the task of putting together a national unity government, meaning divvying up the ministries among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties.
One source of conflict is likely to be the powerful Interior Ministry, which currently is held by SCIRI. Sunnis probably will push for a change and demand the uprooting of Shiite militias from the ministry's security forces.
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