Iraq Breaks Impasse on Government

With a hint of hope and more than a bit of relief, Iraq’s parliament finally met Saturday to endorse a deal among rival factions to name a prime minister and get the first permanent government of the post-Saddam Hussein era off the ground.

The 266 legislators who met in a sweltering Baghdad convention center ended a four-month wait that followed national elections in December. They distributed top political jobs, including the presidency and the speaker of parliament, among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties.

Incumbent President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who was returned to office, then nominated Jawad Maliki, a Shiite political activist and former exile, as prime minister.

“We are working for the sake of a national unity government,” said Maliki, who emerged as the likely choice Friday after his Islamic Dawa Party ally Ibrahim Jafari stepped aside. “All the different groups that are in government must have the right to participate in making decisions.”

The breakthrough produced celebratory gunfire and fireworks in parts of the capital. Iraqis collectively exhaled, comforted that the wait for a stable political leadership might be ending.

The hard road ahead seems sure to test that optimism. The political vacuum has contributed to a sharp escalation in targeted assassinations and intimidation across the country, pushing many Iraqis deeper into the embrace of their own religious or ethnic communities. Many of those with means have left the country altogether.

On a visit to California, President Bush said that the decisions represented a milestone for Iraqis.

The new leadership represents Iraq’s diversity, Bush said, adding: “The Iraqi people have rejected the terrorists’ efforts to divide them, and they have chosen the path of unity for their free nation.”

He called on the new government to meet its responsibility “to deploy the growing strength of the Iraqi security forces to defeat the terrorists and insurgents and establish control over the militias.”

Maliki has 30 days to form a Cabinet that meets the parliament’s approval. It is a delicate task, one in which he must appease competing factions that covet key positions such as those directing the country’s security apparatus and guarding its wealth.

He faces problems that include rampant corruption, neglected services, crumbling infrastructure and an ailing economy that leaves hundreds of thousands of young men unemployed.

The new government will also have to find a formula to share the country’s oil wealth, a potentially explosive issue that has set Sunnis in the resource-poor center and west of Iraq against ethnic Kurds and Shiites in the oil-rich north and south.

But above all, Iraq’s leaders must regain the trust of a traumatized population that has turned out to vote three times since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and now blames the politicians they elected for failing to steady the country.

In interviews around the capital, Iraqis said their main wish was to feel safer on their own streets. For them, the government’s credibility depends on whether it can overcome internal clashes of personality and ideology to establish security.

“If they solve their personal conflicts and look out for the interests of the country, if the new government would actually put their efforts toward maintaining national unity, then nothing will be impossible,” said Hussein Kafaji, a 52-year-old retired civil servant in Baghdad.

But Maliki’s every decision will be fraught with political risk, carrying the potential to alienate key constituencies -- some heavily armed. That challenge was underscored by his first declaration after being named prime minister, in which he called for militias to be incorporated into Iraq’s authorized security forces. Many Iraqis view such militias as a primary cause for the instability rocking the nation. But they also make up much of the new premier’s political base.

“Arms should be in the hand of the government,” Maliki said, noting that Iraq has a law calling for “the merging of militias with the armed forces.”

Rather than emphasize their sectarian or ethnic interests, politicians speaking Saturday to a national TV audience pledged to serve all Iraqis.

“Iraq is made up of Kurds, Sunni, Shiites and Turkmen,” Mahmoud Mashadani, a Sunni Arab and the newly elected speaker of the parliament, said in an emotional speech that recounted his years of jail, exile and suffering under Hussein. “We must face the reality that there is sectarian tension. We must eliminate it. And we will, during the next four years.”

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been a dominant figure in the talks that led to Jafari being replaced, said the Iraqis weren’t just forming a government but also learning to put aside decades of mistrust among the country’s communities.

“What has happened in Iraq was not your typical division of posts between different members of a coalition,” Khalilzad told reporters after the session ended. “This was in part peacemaking. Some of them have been involved in active conflict against the new order. They had changed their attitude from lack of participation to participation.”

He said that despite the delay, the squabbling factions had already laid the groundwork for governing, including the creation of a 32-point statement outlining general policies on security and other major issues.

But skeptics said they doubted that Iraqi leaders had a plan to stem Iraq’s spiraling violence, which grows more gruesome by the week and increasingly threatens to draw in neighboring countries.

“I don’t think there is a plan to end the violence,” said Mithal Alusi, a Sunni Arab legislator who has been mentioned as a candidate for defense minister. “There are some ideas which are beautiful ideas but which are not that far away from dreams.”

Many are watching to see whether Maliki and his allies fill the top jobs with professionals or dole out jobs to key sectarian, ethnic or tribal groups. Secular Iraqis expressed anger that a 25-seat coalition led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who was a no-show at the session, had been cut out of key leadership posts.

“Unfortunately, today’s session showed that sectarianism was used to build the top of the state, and that will spread to the other parts of the state,” said Mehdi Hafidh, a member of Allawi’s slate.

Many, especially Sunni Arabs and secular Iraqis, doubt that a Maliki government would be any more successful than its interim predecessor in allaying fears that it is serving Shiite interests.

“This is still a sectarian government,” said Wamidh Nadhmi, a Sunni Arab political analyst. “People got the jobs because of the community they come from. And to think that a government established on sectarian lines can solve this problem is wishful thinking.”

Also Saturday, bombers struck a market in Muqdadiya, a town 60 miles north of Baghdad, starting a fire with one bomb and timing a second explosion to hit firefighters and other rescue workers. A fireman and a civilian were killed. At least 17 other people were wounded.

Attackers strafed a police patrol in Baghdad with machine-gun fire, killing one officer. Police said they also discovered the bodies of 12 people, one decapitated. The others bore signs of torture.

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Times staff writers Zainab Hussein, Saif Rasheed and Caesar Ahmed in Baghdad and James Gerstenzang in West Sacramento contributed to this report.