Iraq assembly OK's democratic Cabinet

BAGHDAD -- After nearly three months of political infighting, Iraq's National Assembly yesterday approved the country's first elected, democratic government in half a century.

But the new Shi'ite-dominated Cabinet already appeared to be set back by the sectarian divisions that deepened during months of inconclusive and often hostile negotiations over the government. The all-important defense and oil ministries were filled with temporary selections because of lingering disagreements.

Sunni politicians yesterday angrily decried ''sectarian exclusion" of their minority group in the selection of the new Cabinet. And one-third of the members of the transitional National Assembly did not show up to approve the Cabinet ministers, whose selection had been hammered out in recent weeks in back-room deals.

Iraqi leaders portrayed the Cabinet announcement as a start toward creating an inclusive government.

''This is the first step in building the new Iraq," Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shi'ite and leader of the Islamic Dawa Party, told the National Assembly. ''The main thing to keep in mind is that no one will be excluded."

Jaafari's Cabinet includes 15 Shi'ite Arabs, seven Kurds, four Sunnis, and one Christian. According to assembly members, two more ministries will go to Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites, and one more to Kurds. Six women are in the Cabinet.

The immediate public backlash by Sunni political leaders against the choices does not bode well for the new government, whose main tasks are to write a new constitution by the end of August and pave the way for national elections for a permanent government in December.

Although he has declared he wanted to form a government of national unity, Jaafari has failed to assuage Sunni Arabs, most of whom did not vote in the January elections and whose leaders say they have been disenfranchised.

Jaafari also failed to persuade outgoing secular prime minister Iyad Allawi to join his government.

The support of Sunni Arabs is crucial for a new constitution to get approval. If a majority of voters in any three provinces votes against the constitution in a national referendum, it fails.

Ethnic leaders also lashed out at the new government yesterday. Christians and Turkomans joined Sunnis in their vocal criticism after the Cabinet membership was announced.

But Jaafari faces other pressing problems.

Many Iraqi politicians fear it will be impossible in just four months to untangle debates over the influence of Islam, whether Iraq will have a federal government that gives strong autonomy to the Kurdish north, and over the country's fragile ethnic and sectarian balance, all of which must be addressed to draft a new constitution. The government has yet to take charge of a foundering security force and a shaky oil supply.

For now, Jaafari will serve as acting defense minister, a position slated for a Sunni Arab, in addition to prime minister. His deputy, Ahmed Chalabi -- once Washington's choice to replace Hussein, but now on the outs -- will be acting oil minister.

Of the 37 Cabinet posts, Jaafari filled seven on a temporary basis. Under Iraq's transitional law, he must make permanent appointments by May 7.

Even as Jaafari's representatives were releasing the names of the Cabinet ministers, one of the few Sunni Arabs in the assembly, Mishan Jabouri, denounced the new leadership.

Leaders with real Sunni Arab constituencies, including those behind the insurgency, were shut out of the process of selecting the new Cabinet, Jabouri said in a heated speech on the national assembly floor.

Jabouri's speech promised a rocky road ahead for the Shi'ite- and Kurd-dominated government to persuade Sunni Arabs to abandon the insurgency and join ranks with the new government. He accused Sunni leaders like Vice President Ghazi al-Yawer of ''selling out" other Sunnis by not pushing for their appointments to key ministries.

''We are facing a difficult phase of disenfranchisement and marginalization," Jabouri said of Sunnis.

Yawer, who served as president in the interim government, said he would avidly fight for the rights of Sunnis, who he says got fewer ministry posts than they deserved.

Even secular politicians dismissed the new government's claim to represent all Iraqi political factions, and not just Kurds and religious Shi'ites.

''We were hoping that this would be a government of national unity," said Mufeed al-Jazairi, a communist assembly member. ''Unfortunately, it was not to be. This is a government only for the victors in the elections."

Still, the new government needs all the support it can get to solve Iraq's security crisis, Jazairi said, promising that his opposition party would not stand in the government's way.

Secular parties like the communists and Allawi's party were overshadowed by ethnic and religious gerrymandering in the formation of the new government.

A Kurdish leader, former vice president Rowsch Shaways, will join Chalabi as a deputy prime minister. A third deputy slot, reserved for a Sunni Arab, remains empty after the Sunni candidate was rejected for past ties to the Ba'ath Party.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shi'ite religious authority in Iraq, has instructed the coalition of Shi'ite parties that controls half the seats in the National Assembly to set aside political horse-trading and focus on the constitution and the December elections.

''We should be able to finish writing the constitution on time," said Hummam Baqir Hamoudi, an assemblyman from the Shi'ite coalition. But, he added, all political groups would have to agree to draw heavily on the interim constitution drafted last year during the US occupation.

Addressing the assembly, Jaafari invoked the new government's mission in a call to put national progress first.

''The journey was full of blood, words, sweat, and tears until this day, when our people gave you their trust to carry out this responsibility," said Jaafari, a dissident who fled Hussein's Iraq.

Hussein, facing trial, celebrated his 68th birthday yesterday in a jail cell. April 28 was a national holiday under the Ba'athist regime.

Hamoudi said the appointment of a new government ''is a gift from the Iraqi people to the criminal Saddam on his birthday."

Members of the government honored Lamia Abed Khadouri al-Sakri, 50, an assemblywoman who was shot to death Wednesday in her Baghdad home.

She was the first elected assembly member slain since the Jan. 30 ballot.

Jabouri called the assembly ''martyrs-in-waiting," a reference to the insurgency's sustained attack on Iraqi government officials, which it views as collaborators with American occupiers.

Globe correspondents Asmaa Waguih and Sa'ad al-Izzi contributed to this story. Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com.