| 24 April 2006 01:26 | |
| Iraq's political leaders on Sunday threw their weight behind the choice of Jawad al-Maliki as the prime minister-designate, and prepared to unveil a 33-point plan to renew Iraq and remove the need for foreign troops. As Maliki, a member of the largest bloc in Parliament, the Shia alliance, opened discussions on forming a new Cabinet, Jalal Talabani, the President, said the straight-talking Shia politician was the "right man" to head a government of national unity. Talabani said the country's first full-term government since the fall of Saddam Hussein would comprise "competent" ministers, and that the door was open to all Iraqis who wanted to work to end sectarianism and rebuild the country. "We have all signed up to a national political programme that will ensure unity, democracy and the rule of law," he said in the resort of Salaheddin, overlooking the Kurdish regional capital, Irbil. "The future of Iraq is in our hands." He spoke a day after the Parliament elected Maliki as prime minister-designate, ending a months-long standoff which saw an increase in sectarian violence sparked by the bombing of the golden mosque in Samarra. Talabani, who had been instrumental in the campaign to remove the previous prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, praised Maliki. "He is a patriot who was firm in his struggle against dictatorship," he said. In Saturday's crucial vote, Talabani, a Kurd, was re-elected as President and Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab Islamist who opposed the US invasion, was chosen as speaker of the national assembly. The breakthrough was welcomed in Washington and London. United States President George Bush, who telephoned both Talabani and Maliki on Sunday, described it as "a historic achievement". Bush promised the support of the US "and our coalition partners" to help secure the country and provide the conditions for foreign troops to withdraw. In one of his first statements, Maliki vowed to create a security force that would be "answerable to the elected authorities and respect the Iraqi Constitution". A national security council would be created to oversee the work of the security forces and help to counter suspicions of sectarianism. The 33-point programme, hammered out among Iraq's main political blocs, includes a promise to end sectarianism in government institutions and to review the status of thousands of government detainees, a politically sensitive issue among Iraq's Sunni Arabs. And in a move likely to please Iraq's Kurds, a timetable is included for a vote on the status of Kirkuk, which Kurds want as part of their federal region. The plan also calls for accelerating the creation of Iraqi security forces to "end the duty of the multinational forces and return them to their countries". Under Iraq's Constitution, Maliki has 30 days to form a government. This is a delicate task made harder by the violence -- much of it sectarian -- that continues to course through Baghdad and parts of the Sunni triangle. Three US soldiers and 23 Iraqi civilians were killed on Sunday, and dozens more wounded in attacks across the country. In Baghdad, mortar rounds fired at the ministry of defence on the edge of the green zone killed at least seven bystanders, the police said. At least eight other mortars exploded on the other side of the Tigris river in central Baghdad, but no casualties were reported. The bodies of eight Iraqi men who were apparently killed in captivity were also found in the capital. The Iraqi Islamic party, the country's largest Sunni Arab party, said the mutilated bodies of several Sunni Arabs had arrived at a local morgue in the mostly Sunni district of Adhamiya. The party said Sunnis were now bearing the brunt of the sectarian violence, which many believe is being conducted with the blessing of the Shia-dominated interior ministry. Reining in the activities of the religious militias will be one of the first tests for the new government, the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said on Sunday. He said the militias, including the Mehdi army of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the Badr brigade of the Shia Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, provided "the infrastructure of a civil war". - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 |
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