Key Cabinet members
The following are key members of Iraq's new 39-member Cabinet. Three of the most important posts in the government -- the ministries of defense, interior, and national security -- were left vacant for now because negotiators could not agree on who should fill them.
Nouri al-Maliki (Shi'ite) -- prime minister and acting interior minister. Maliki is a stalwart of the Dawa Party, which led an armed underground resistance to the secular Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein. He fled Iraq in 1980 and eventually found refuge in Syria, returning after Hussein was overthrown.
Salam Zikam Ali al-Zubaie (Sunni) -- deputy prime minister and acting defense minister. Zubaie's political group is part of the main Sunni coalition, the Iraqi Accordance Front. Although from a well-known tribe, he has not been high profile. He heads the Agriculture Engineers Union.
Barham Saleh (Kurd) -- deputy prime minister and acting national security minister. An official of President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan since 1998, Saleh became prime minister of the PUK-led regional government in January 2001. He survived an assassination attempt at his home in April 2002. He joined the Iraqi transitional government in June 2004 as deputy prime minister for security affairs.
Hoshyar Zebari (Kurd) -- foreign minister. Zebari was the foreign spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party for more than 10 years. He frequently represented the KDP in meetings with US State Department officials in the 1990s. He was born in the Kurdish town of Aqrah, but grew up in the mainly Arab city of Mosul. He is a graduate of the University of Essex in the United Kingdom.
Hashim al-Shebli (Sunni) -- justice minister. Previously appointed human rights minister, he rejected the post after being approved by Parliament on May 8, saying he had not been consulted.
Hussain al-Shahristani (Shi'ite) -- oil minister. A nuclear scientist, Shahristani was once director of research at the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission. While director, he was imprisoned for possessing a subversive leaflet condemning the repression of Iraqi Shi'ites. He fled Iraq in 1991 after being imprisoned for refusing to work in Hussein's nuclear program and worked for human rights organizations in Iran and London thereafter.
SOURCES: BBC, Associated Press
