Iraq's New Premier Submits His Cabinet Picks

By Patrick J. McDonnell

April 28, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD —

Iraq’s new prime minister Wednesday proposed a Cabinet of three dozen ministers drawn from the nation’s major ethnic and religious groups, heralding the end of a three-month political impasse that had contributed to an atmosphere of instability.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari did not publicly announce the names of the ministers but submitted them to the three-member presidency council, which must endorse the candidates unanimously before forwarding them to the transitional National Assembly for final approval. A vote in the legislature was expected today.

U.S. and Iraqi officials hope the approval of a Cabinet will help quell the nation’s insurgency, which seems to have picked up strength in recent weeks. On Wednesday, militants stormed into the Baghdad house of an Iraqi legislator and shot her to death.

The victim, Lamia Abed Khadouri Sakri, was the first member of the new National Assembly to be slain; several others have survived assassination attempts.

Jafari, a soft-spoken physician from the Shiite Muslim slate that won the most votes in the Jan. 30 vote to elect the National Assembly, announced the selection of the Cabinet in an emotional speech in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.

“We must restore the stolen smile to the lips of the children,” he said. “We must wipe the scars of the past from the cheeks of the orphans and the widows.”

Aides and news reports here indicated that Jafari’s slate and the Kurdish faction that received the second-most votes in January would control at least 25 ministries. At least six of the proposed ministers are said to be Sunni Muslims, fulfilling the promise of the victorious Shiite and Kurdish coalitions to reach out to a long-dominant group largely disenfranchised with the ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

The Cabinet appointments, if ratified, would complete the formation of the transitional government, a crucial stage in Iraq’s evolution toward representative government, as outlined in the U.S.-backed interim constitution.

The three-member presidency council, led by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, is widely expected to rubber-stamp the slate and pass it on to the National Assembly, where a simple majority is needed for approval.

If the assembly immediately endorses the Cabinet, the new government will be formed today, which also happens to be Hussein’s birthday. A formal hand-over of power from outgoing interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi would then be expected within days.

Allawi’s government has remained in office in a caretaker capacity since the January election as protracted negotiations about the Cabinet and other top positions dragged on. The situation has caused a dangerous power vacuum, observers say.

After a relative lull following the Jan. 30 vote, car bombings, ambushes and assassinations have risen recently. Some provincial governments have defied the authority of the Interior Ministry, appointing police chiefs without the ministry’s required approval.

“There are a lot of worrisome things happening out in the provinces,” said a senior U.S. official in Baghdad.

U.S. diplomats, along with top officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have been pressing Iraqi lawmakers to form a government and end the sense of uncertainty.

“We did see a tendency for this whole thing to slow down and possibly descend into chaos,” said the U.S. official in Baghdad, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. “This is very new for these people.... Trust in this country is a work in progress.”

The search for a Cabinet that successfully straddled Iraq’s ethnic and religious divides has been a grueling challenge for Jafari, the candidate of the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance.

Shiites make up about 60% of Iraq’s population of 25 million, according to most estimates, but they were brutally repressed under Hussein, who is a Sunni. Kurds, also subjugated during Hussein’s regime, account for about 17% of the population, while Sunnis are thought to make up 20%.

The nation’s complex fault lines -- Sunni versus Shiite, Kurd versus Arab, secular versus religious -- have often made it difficult to craft consensus.

In the new government, a Shiite, Bayan Jabber, will probably head the powerful Interior Ministry, which controls local police and internal security. Shiites are also in line for the important ministries of finance and oil, officials said.

Interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, is certain to retain his portfolio, officials said, and Kurds are also set to head the planning, public works and water ministries, among others. Much of the billions in reconstruction aid pouring in from the United States is expected to be funneled through the Planning Ministry, set to be headed by Barham Salih, a deputy prime minister in Allawi’s interim administration.

But Sunnis -- who largely stayed away from the polls on election day -- have been awarded six ministry posts, including defense, officials said. It was still unclear late Wednesday who the defense minister-designate would be.

Leaders of the victorious Shiite and Kurdish factions have stressed the need to include Sunni Arabs in the new government. Disenchanted Sunni Arabs are believed to form the backbone of the insurgency that has devastated the nation in the last two years, thwarting economic progress and leading to thousands of deaths among U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians.

In addition to the ministry posts, Jafari plans to name at least three deputy prime ministers, including a Sunni Arab, a Kurd and a Shiite, and may add a fourth. One of the deputy prime ministers, officials said, would probably be Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite and onetime Pentagon favorite who had a falling-out with U.S. authorities over allegations of counterfeiting and providing misleading prewar intelligence.

One Cabinet post is expected to go to a Christian, officials said. Christians are a tiny minority in Iraq. At least seven women are expected to serve in the Cabinet, Jafari said.

Excluded, officials said, were representatives of outgoing Prime Minister Allawi’s party. The party came in third in the January vote and controls 40 seats in the National Assembly, but aides to Jafari said the group’s demands for at least four Cabinet posts, including one major ministry, could not be met while setting aside slots for Sunnis.

Ill feelings have tainted relations between the victorious Shiite coalition and Allawi, a secular Shiite. Many Shiites have accused Allawi of having reached out inappropriately to members of Hussein’s former Baath Party and are calling for a renewed campaign to rid the government of ex-Baathists.

The apparent exclusion of Allawi’s slate means the victorious coalition’s stated desire to form a government of national unity -- involving all major parties -- will not be met. But the outgoing prime minister has said he and his allies will be happy to serve as the loyal opposition in the assembly.

Once a new government is formed, its principal task will be to write a new constitution.

Lawmakers face a mid-August deadline to complete the complex document, and there is already talk about seeking an extension.

According to the existing schedule, the completed constitution is to be put to voters in a referendum by mid-October. Then, in December, Iraqis are to go to the polls to elect a new National Assembly.

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New Cabinet

Although Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari did not reveal the names of the candidates, aides and other politicians indicated the 36 positions would break down like this:

Proposed Cabinet

Shiite Arab: 18

Kurdish: 9

Sunni Arab: 7

Christian : 1

Undetermined: 1

Iraq’s ethnic/religious breakdown

Shiite Arab: 60%

Sunni Arab: 20%

Kurdish: 17%

Other: 3%

Note: Includes Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish deputy premiers, with an unspecified fourth deputy also mentioned as a possibility.