Hussein Shakes Up His Cabinet : Iraq: He relinquishes the prime minister’s job to a Shiite Muslim and ousts Aziz as foreign minister. But he shows no sign of yielding to insurgents.

President Saddam Hussein shook up the top levels of his beleaguered Iraqi government Saturday, giving up one of his own titles to Sadoun Hammadi, a trusted Shiite, but showing no sign of personally bending to the insurgencies sweeping the war-wrecked country.

The key moves announced in a midafternoon Baghdad Radio broadcast named Hammadi prime minister and sheared Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz of his portfolio.

Hammadi, a former foreign minister and Speaker of the National Assembly during the 1980s, will head the Iraqi Cabinet as prime minister, a post Hussein previously held in addition to those of president, chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and head of the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party.

Baghdad Radio said the changes were made in presidential orders signed by Hussein, but it made no other comment on them. The report followed Friday’s announcement by the official Iraqi News Agency that Taha Yassin Ramadan, a confidant and revolutionary colleague of Hussein, had been given the position of vice president. He replaced Taha Muhi Maruf, a Kurd.

Last weekend, the Iraqi leader, addressing his country for the first time since American-led forces crushed his once-vaunted army and drove it from Kuwait, said he would realign his Cabinet to deal with the ruinous results of the Persian Gulf War.

His primary problems are rebellion against his 12-year rule in the Shiite Muslim-dominated south and the Kurdish-populated north, and the bombing devastation that, according to a U.N. report, has sent the nation of 17 million back to the “pre-industrial age.”

Unconfirmed reports broadcast on Syrian and Iranian radio stations for the second day in a row said that street fighting had broken out in Baghdad and that the government had declared a state of siege in the capital, blocking all traffic from entering the city and searching cars at checkpoints.

And in the far south of the country, near the Kuwaiti border, hungry Iraqis fought for food after U.S. and Saudi military leaders changed their policy and began issuing food to civilians trapped on the allied side of the Gulf War cease-fire line.

Reuters news agency reported that children crowded around a Saudi army truck, tearing the canvas cover. Their parents jostled with outstretched arms to grab bread and packets of pasta and tea thrown from the truck, and Saudi soldiers threw flat loaves of pita bread into the crowd in a futile effort to keep people at a distance.

The allies decided to provide food, water and medical care to up to 20,000 Iraqis trapped in a zone between Kuwait’s border and the cease-fire line after relief groups criticized their refusal to take responsibility for the civilians. Military commanders had previously argued that they would be swamped with refugees from Iraq’s internal uprisings if word spread that they were handing out food.

Hussein’s position on the insurgencies appeared clear in his retention of his cousin, Ali Hassan Majid, as interior minister in his Cabinet. Majid became notorious for his suppression of Iraqi Kurds during the last year of the Iran-Iraq War. He was in charge in Kurdistan when the Iraqi air forces gassed Kurdish civilians in the town of Halabja.

Majid was sent to occupied Kuwait to break the resistance there and, when rebellion broke out in Iraq itself after the Gulf War, Hussein named him interior minister, in charge of the country’s ruthless security services.

Also retaining his post was Majid’s brother, Hussein Kamel Majid, who in addition to being a cousin of Hussein is also the president’s brother-in-law. Kamel stays as head of the ministries of petroleum and industry and of military industrialization.

The top civil servant at the Ministry of Petroleum and Industry, Usama Abdel Razzak, was named minister of state for oil, a secondary Cabinet post, and will probably be Iraq’s delegate to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The purpose behind the other changes was less clear. Naming Hammadi as prime minister appears to address longstanding complaints about the lack of a Shiite voice in the regime. The new foreign minister, Ahmed Hussein Khoudair, is also a Shiite, replacing Aziz, the only ranking Christian in the Iraqi leadership. Khoudair was formerly chief of staff in Hussein’s presidential office.

Aziz, who handled the failed, last-minute attempt to avert the ground war through Soviet diplomacy, will retain his position as deputy prime minister, the radio announced, but it’s a post without operational control.

Hamid Youssef Hammadi, Hussein’s personal secretary, was elevated to the post of culture and information minister, replacing Latif Jasim, who had held the post for 12 years and was always one of Hussein’s closest collaborators. There was no explanation for Jasim’s dismissal from the Cabinet.

Hussein did not change his top defense team, keeping Lt. Gen. Saadi Tuma Jubouri as defense minister and Gen. Abdul Jabar Shanshal as minister of state for defense.

Practical power will remain in the hands of Hussein, whose autocratic rule has been marked by an aversion to open debate. Authorities on the 53-year-old strongman’s exercise of authority say he makes all major decisions and has developed a coterie of sycophants unwilling to deliver bad news. Cabinet ministers answer to Hussein. His inner circle is the Revolutionary Command Council, a body of five or eight men, depending on its definition, that dispatches orders second only to the president’s in authority.

Whether this structure survives the insurgencies and the need for immediate efforts at reconstruction will determine Hussein’s hold on power.

The appointment of Hammadi may reflect an attempt to deal with both problems. The new prime minister, a short, gruff-speaking man, is reputed to support political reform within the Baathist system. In the last weeks before the ground war broke out, he carried Iraq’s diplomatic offensive in Iran, North Africa and Jordan. A graduate of the American University of Beirut, Hammadi is also considered an authority on economics.

WHO’S UP, WHO’S DOWN IN IRAQ

SADOUN HAMMADI

Hammadi, Iraq’s new prime minister, is a Shiite Muslim from the holy city of Karbala, a hot spot in the uprising against Saddam Hussein, and is regarded as a leading proponent of political change. Despite his background and reformist tendencies, Hammadi, who is in his mid-50s, has been one of Hussein’s closest associates for decades--and among the handful of ranking Iraqis who have survived Hussein’s periodic murderous purges. TARIK AZIZ

After Saddam Hussein himself, Aziz was the most prominent Iraqi in the long run-up to the Persian Gulf War. But the silver-haired Aziz would seem to be relinquishing that spotlight on the world stage along with his foreign minister’s portfolio. While Hussein was a street fighter, Aziz was a propagandist and party ideologue. A Christian in a Muslim nation, Aziz, 54, has no political base and is totally dependent up the president for power.