Cabinet Appointed by Iraqis

The U.S.- appointed Iraqi Governing Council took a broad jump Monday toward restoring self-rule when it named 24 men and one woman to a provisional Cabinet to take over the day-to-day running of the government from American occupiers.

What actual power the council and the new ministers have remains vague, and many Iraqis view both bodies as little more than fronts for foreign invaders. But the long-awaited creation of a new governing framework gave momentum to Iraqis’ demands to retake control of their country in the wake of three devastating acts of terrorism last month that left the impression the U.S.-led coalition is unable to rule what it has conquered.

Some council members groused that the Cabinet should have been chosen at least a month ago and that its 25 portfolios were distributed more along ethnic and political lines than on the basis of ministers’ professional abilities.

But even those who saw the new government as imperfect celebrated its emergence and the hope it holds out that Iraqis can take care of their own affairs and hasten an end to the occupation.

Since the country remained in mourning following Friday’s terrorist killing of a Shiite leader, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim, the Governing Council issued only a list of the 25 ministers’ names -- most little-known figures or returned exiles -- without fanfare.

Still, the newly empowered politicians spoke about the need to get down to the difficult work of rebuilding a nation shattered by the U.S.-led war, then looted by criminals and left vulnerable to sabotage and violence by foreign terrorists and remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“I’m not very satisfied with the way it happened, but at least it happened,” Rajaa Habib Khuzaai, an obstetrician from Diwaniyah, said of her fellow council members’ focus on ethnic diversity. “I’m especially unhappy that there is only one woman minister.”

But she said the deliberations went smoothly and that the wheels of government are now turning -- a demonstration for Iraqis that progress is being made back to independence.

“This government will represent Iraq and in due course our sovereignty will be restored,” said Safeen Dizayee, a diplomat with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which inherited responsibility for foreign affairs.

The diplomatic portfolio will be an essential one, Dizayee said, as designated Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the party’s spokesman and international affairs advisor, will be the face Iraq presents to a world that has changed dramatically in the 12 years that this country was ostracized by sanctions.

Iraq had only 60 missions abroad and 3,000 employees of the Foreign Ministry before the war, deployed along the diplomatic lines drawn by the Cold War, Dizayee said. With new countries created by the demise of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe, the new Iraq emerging from 35 years of dictatorship needs to forge new regional friendships and repair ties with the democratic world, Dizayee said.

*

Diversity in Ministries

Of the 25 ministries, Shiites will control 13. Kurds won control of five, and fellow Sunnis in the Arab community gained an equal number. One Turkmen and one Assyrian Christian round out the Cabinet.

The key Interior Ministry post went to Nouri Badran, a Shiite Arab aligned with Iraqi National Accord leader Iyad Allawi, the Governing Council member responsible for security.

Helping Iraq break out of the prevailing security vacuum is a major priority for the new governing bodies and the No. 1 demand and expectation of Iraqis sick of the crime and violence that have plagued them during the more than five months since the U.S.-led invasion. Hussein released 30,000 prisoners on the eve of the war, and looters and saboteurs have had a free hand since the former army and police force were disbanded.

The sole woman in the Cabinet, Nasreen Mustafa Sadiq, is a Kurd who lately served as minister for migration and refugee affairs in Kurdistan, the northern provinces of Iraq that enjoyed de facto independence due to a U.S.- and British-patrolled “no-fly” zone imposed after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. She will be minister for public works.

The 25 council members had indicated late Thursday that they were close to announcing the Cabinet, which in turn will appoint senior ministry officials and hire staffs to get public services and industry working. But the Friday car bombing in Najaf that killed Hakim and more than 100 others shocked the country and halted the work of the grief-stricken council.

The U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, had been on vacation in the United States when the bombing occurred -- the third attack after an Aug. 7 bombing at the Jordanian Embassy here that killed 17 people and a blast at U.N. headquarters Aug. 19 that killed 23. Bremer returned to Baghdad Sunday and met with council members early Monday to push them to announce their appointments despite the mourning period, council members said.

*

In Iraqi Hands

The U.S.-led coalition is eager to see Iraqis take responsibility for their own affairs as soon as possible, said a senior official.

“But the Iraqis have their own terms as well. They aren’t going to accept us saying, ‘Here’s the baby, you change it.’ ” Indeed, council members have been taking a firmer stance against the occupation authorities. On Saturday, the council’s current president, Ibrahim Jafari, insisted that the occupation authority needed to cede all responsibility for security to the new Interior Ministry. Another council member, Mohammed Bahr Uloum, has suspended his participation in the interim executive body in protest of the inadequate security provided by the U.S.-led coalition that he said led to the deadly Najaf bombing.

Uloum’s son, Ibrahim Mohammed Bahr Uloum, was named to the influential post of oil minister by the council, a move many expected to lead to the elder Uloum’s return to the governing body.

Appointment of the ministers seven weeks after the Governing Council was seated “represents a significant step forward,” said Charles Heatly, a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority headed by Bremer.

Badran, the interior minister, will be in command of the currently 37,000-strong police force and of civil defense brigades being organized to provide security on a neighborhood basis, Heatly said. The coalition remains legally responsible for security as the occupying power, he noted, but insisted that the real decision-making would be done by Iraqis.

“It’s a joint effort, and the Iraqis are taking more and more control of it,” he said, adding that the new Cabinet members would have broad autonomy in choosing projects and spending their budgets.

Each ministry will employ hundreds of people, and the authority deploys only a few advisors to work with them, Heatly said, so “there’s no way we could be consulted on every decision.” A returned exile who had close contact with U.S. officials before the war, Badran is expected to work with the American occupation force rather than push for immediate responsibility for securing the borders and restoring some semblance of public order.

“Mr. Badran is fully engaged in studying the newly born ministry in terms of its structure, subsidiaries and financial capabilities -- and concerning the current security situation in Iraq, what first steps are to be taken,” his spokesman, Salwan Binni, said when asked what the new minister’s priorities would be.

Two ministries that existed in Hussein’s government have been eliminated -- those responsible for defense and information. The number of Cabinet ministers rose from 21 to 25, however, because of the addition of new portfolios for human rights, the environment and migration affairs, and the reconfiguration of several ministries that had responsibility for multiple aspects of transportation, communications, public works and labor.

Heatly said the coalition was making good progress in restoring essential services to Iraqi cities, contending that some operations are now in better shape than before the U.S.-led invasion that destroyed dozens of government buildings and disrupted water, electricity, public transportation and sewage treatment.

He hailed the ever-thickening traffic snarls around Baghdad, saying they suggest “a degree of normality” after months of gasoline shortages and roads blocked by war debris. Iraqi police Monday began directing traffic at key intersections, where drivers pay no heed to traffic lights even though electricity in the capital is now regular enough to keep them running.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

*

Key figures in the Iraqi Cabinet

Here are profiles of Iraq’s key ministers appointed by the country’s U.S.-backed Governing Council:

* Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari was born in 1953. An ethnic Kurd, he grew up in the mainly Arab Iraqi city of Mosul. Fluent in Arabic and English, Zebari studied political science in Jordan and Britain. He became a senior official in Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party in 1979. Zebari has been head of the international relations office and the main spokesman for KDP since 1988. He was also on a council for Iraqi opposition groups in exile in 1999.

* Oil Minister Ibrahim Mohammed Bahr Uloum, 49, is the son of Iraqi Governing Council member Mohammed Bahr Uloum. The younger Uloum holds a degree in petroleum and minerals from the University of New Mexico. Former oil officials from Iraq said Uloum was unknown to the old guard of oil technocrats, though he had some experience in the Kuwaiti oil industry. He spent much of his life in London and returned to Iraq after U.S.-led forces deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in April, they said.

* Interior Minister Nouri Badran was born in Basra in 1943. Badran is spokesman of the previously exiled Iraqi National Accord and returned to the country after Hussein was toppled. An academic who later worked as a diplomat, he was an outspoken opponent of Hussein. Badran said he was regularly targeted by Iraqi agents while living in Europe and escaped several assassination attempts.

* Finance Minister Kamel Keylani, 44, is among the few ministers who are not known to have been involved in politics and who lived in Iraq under Hussein’s rule. A Baghdad-born businessman, Keylani has a degree in economics from Baghdad University and runs a contracting firm.

Source: Reuters