Sunni bloc ready to rejoin Iraq Cabinet

- The main Sunni Arab political bloc announced today that it was ready to rejoin the Shiite Muslim-led Cabinet, a step that could boost reconciliation efforts and help shore up Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s faltering government.

Rashid Azzawi, a parliamentary representative for the Iraqi Accordance Front, said the Sunni alliance expected to submit its nominees for the Cabinet within days.

The bloc ordered six members to leave the Cabinet last year, accusing Maliki and other Shiite politicians of ignoring Sunni interests. But one member, the Sunni planning minister, remained on the job against the instructions and is no longer considered part of the bloc.

Negotiations to persuade the other Sunni politicians to return to the government have been taking place for months.

Azzawi said the bloc had waited to see evidence that its demands were being met. He cited as progress the passage of a law that could provide conditional amnesty to thousands of detainees, many of whom are Sunnis, as well as a crackdown against Shiite militiamen.

Maliki’s office described the decision as a success for national reconciliation.

“The support from all political factions for the government’s current activities shows that it is representative of all,” it said in a statement issued after Maliki met today with visiting British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

However, it did not appear that he was including followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, many of whom have been battling U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad and the southern port city of Basra since the start of an Iraqi government crackdown late last month. Sadr’s followers also walked out of the Cabinet last year, along with the Sunnis and a handful of other politicians.

In an apparent reference to the cleric’s movement, the statement quoted Maliki as telling Miliband that “political activity should not go hand in hand with armed activity, that all should work as politicians.”

Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army militia to stand down in August, a truce he says remains in effect despite ongoing clashes. But he has resisted government demands that his fighters disarm.

Sadr’s representatives said today that they had no intention of returning to the government.

Azzawi said his bloc would be submitting names for the five posts it abandoned along with at least one other that it will be seeking.

Maliki has previously said that he reserves the right to redistribute posts among the main political blocs and to introduce skilled technocrats who are not necessarily affiliated to a political party. Sunni tribal leaders, who have helped U.S. and Iraqi forces drive insurgents out of many areas, are also pressing for government representation.

In other developments today, the U.S. military announced that two soldiers were killed Wednesday when a vehicle rolled onto its side while driving to a combat outpost north of Baghdad. Another soldier and an interpreter were injured in the incident, the military said in a statement.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Times staff writer Caesar Ahmed contributed to this report.