Iraq gets first post-war cabinet

IRAQ got its first post-war cabinet yesterday as the funeral march for Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, killed in the Najaf car bomb massacre, continued its three-day journey to the revered cleric’s final resting place.

As the holy city still reeled after the deadly bombing, fresh violence erupted when two people were killed in an assault on a house owned by an official of Saddam’s banned Ba’ath party.

Iraq’s new cabinet is divided up among the country’s various communities, with 13 ministries going to Shi’ite Muslims, five to Sunnis, five to Kurds, one to a Turkmeni and one to the Christians. However, it will have to report to the Governing Council, appointed in late July by the US-led forces that ousted Saddam in April. Each ministry will continue to be supervised by a coalition-appointed advisor, most of whom are American.

Paul Bremer, the top US official in Iraq, will retain overall authority in the country until an elected government is in place, a move scheduled for some time next year.

The Council appointed Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, from the Shi’ite Muslim majority, to the key role of oil minister. Al-Uloum takes responsibility for the rehabilitation of Iraq’s dilapidated and war-damaged oil industry, Baghdad’s only significant source of export revenues.

Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official Hoshyar Zebari was named foreign minister, former exile Nouri Badran interior minister and Kamel al-Keylani finance minister.

A woman, Nisreen Brawi, will be minister for public works and Abdul Basit Turki was given a new human rights portfolio.

The defence and information ministries were dissolved by the US-led authority ruling Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April.

The ministers will be sworn in after today’s burial.

All ministry buildings in Baghdad, with the exception of the oil ministry, protected from the start of the war by the Americans, were looted, burned or bombed. Many of them are structurally unsound and must be rebuilt.

Thousands, meanwhile, marched and waved black, red and green flags of Islam as the funeral procession for Ayatollah Hakim arrived in the city of Hilla after starting out from Baghad on Sunday.

Tens of thousands have turned out along the route in a collective outpouring of grief and anger for the murdered leader, who was blown to bits in the Najaf attack. He is due to be buried today in Najaf.

Some mourners shouted anti-Saddam slogans while others railed against the American-led occupation. Iraqi police said at least two Saudis were among 19 people detained in connection with the Najaf attack, which fuelled fears that Iraq is spinning out of control five months into the US-led occupation.

Meanwhile, two people were killed yesterday in Najaf in an assault on a house owned by an official of the banned Ba’ath party in Najaf.

“This morning at 5.00am, police and members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) launched an assault on the house of a Ba’ath party official, Karim Ghaith, in Ishtiraki, in the south of the city,” he told AFP. “There was an exchange of gunfire and two of the assailants were killed, and the Ba’ath party official escaped.

“The assailants burnt the house,” he said, without saying if the dead were police officers or members of SCIRI.

Security forces in Kufah, another holy city near Najaf and on Hakim’s funeral route, said they arrested four men after finding two cars laden with bombs. Hakim’s remains were due to be kept overnight in Kufah.

Inside the city’s mosque, where Hakim’s coffin is to be temporarily housed, clerics were calling through loudspeakers for people to “open their eyes” because “Saddam Hussein’s followers and al-Qaida will try today or tomorrow to make large explosions.”