17 May 2006
U.S. Welcomes News that Iraqi Government Will Be Announced May 20
American diplomat says parliament's approval would end transitional phase
Washington -- The United States welcomes reports that Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki intends to convene the country’s parliament, the Council of Representatives, to announce the composition of his government and to ask the parliament for a vote of confirmation.
Robert Ford, the political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said the government that al-Maliki will present “is a much broader government than before, and it has deeper roots throughout Iraq.”
Ford, speaking from Baghdad May 17 via videoconference, said the new government will include Sunni Arabs democratically elected in December 2005 and noted “strong support from the Sunni Arab Tawfiq block and also from the predominantly Sunni Arab Hiwar block which themselves dominated the elections in the Sunni provinces.”
The Sunnis will be participating in the national unity government with democratically elected Shi’a and Kurds, as well as people from the Iraqiya list led by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Ford said the negotiations to form the new government have been “long and difficult” because “we have a fundamentally different kind of Iraqi government that is emerging out of this process.” He added that the outgoing Iraqi transitional government led by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari “did not have a strong elected Sunni Arab support base.”
“It has been hard to get here, but we applaud the efforts of Prime Minister-designate al-Maliki and his political partners -- Kurdish, Tawfiq and Iraqiya and Hiwar -- for the progress they have made,” Ford said. “And we will see if they can in fact close the deal by [May 20].”
NAMING OF CABINET WOULD COMPLETE IRAQ’S TRANSITION
An American diplomat who has been in discussions with Iraqi leaders said the approval of the new government would be a significant milestone, comparing the situation to two years ago when Ambassador L. Paul Bremer was head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq.
“When the Iraqi parliament votes on [May 20], we will have finally finished the transition process to where we have a democratically elected, permanent Iraqi government. We will be out of the transition,” the diplomat said, speaking on background.
He emphasized that never before had there been an Iraqi government comprised of elected Shi’a, elected Kurds and elected Sunni Arabs working together. “This is going to be the first time in Iraq. It’s going to be unique since, frankly, the Iraqi state was founded,” the diplomat said.
The full Cabinet has not yet been finalized, but the candidates for the prominent posts of the Interior and Defense ministries have been paired down to a “short list” of names. Regardless, “we think it can be finished by [May 20],” the diplomat said.
The diplomat also expressed U.S. confidence in Prime Minister-designate al-Maliki, saying he is “showing us good instincts in terms of the criteria that he has laid out” in selecting members of his government, including that they be independent from Iraqi political parties, not tied to any militia group and that they have credibility among different communities in Iraq.
The Council of Representatives is unlikely to reject any proposed ministers, he said, because al-Maliki has been working to build a consensus prior to the vote of confirmation.
Commenting on the Sunni component of the new government, the diplomat said that with the high voter turnout in the December 2005 elections, Sunnis “have strong popular support. In a sense they have a mandate which they did not have before.”
They also have shown that the political process, as opposed to violence, “gives people a chance not only to express opinions but to actually reach positions of authority within the government working in tandem with other Iraqis.”
With concern over the presence of militia groups rising in Iraq, the diplomat acknowledged that the disarmament of militias “is not a simple task,” and involves ensuring all communities in Iraq feel secure against the threat of violence and achieving an understanding among all sides that the disarmament must happen simultaneously so no community feels at risk in laying down its weapons.
“That is a process that is going to take time to develop here,” he said, including continuing efforts to build up Iraqi security forces to the point that they can protect all communities.
For additional information, see Iraq Update.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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