Sunnis Agree to End Boycott, Rejoin Iraq Government
Mohammed Ameen/Reuters
The site of a car bombing where one civilian was killed while six others were wounded on Thursday in Baghdad.
By JAMES GLANZ
Published: April 24, 2008
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s largest Sunni bloc has agreed to return to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s cabinet after a nine-month boycott, several Sunni leaders said on Thursday, citing a recently passed amnesty law and the Maliki government’s crackdown on Shiite militias as reasons for the move.
The Sunni leaders said they were still working out the details of their return, an indication that the deal could still fall through. But such a return would represent a major political victory for Mr. Maliki in the midst of a military operation that has at times been criticized as poorly planned and fraught with risk. The principal group his security forces have been confronting is the Mahdi Army, a powerful militia led by Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric. Even though Mr. Maliki’s American-backed offensive against elements of the Mahdi Army has frequently stalled and has led to bitter complaints of civilian casualties, the Sunni leaders said that the government had done enough to address their concerns that they had decided to end their boycott.
“Our conditions were very clear, and the government achieved some of them,” said Adnan al-Duleimi, the head of Tawafiq, the largest Sunni bloc in the government. Mr. Duleimi said the achievements included “the general amnesty, chasing down the militias and disbanding them and curbing the outlaws.”
The recently passed amnesty law has already led to the release of many Sunni prisoners, encouraging Sunni parties that the government is serious about enforcing it. And the attacks on Shiite militias have apparently begun to assuage longstanding complaints that only Sunni groups blamed for the insurgency have been the targets of American and Iraqi security forces.
Exactly which ministries will be given to which Sunni politicians is still under negotiation, said Ayad Samarrai, the deputy general secretary of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest party within Tawafiq. Among those under consideration are the Ministries of Culture, Planning, Higher Education and Women’s Affairs and the State Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Samarrai said.
The details are complicated because Ali Baban, who now heads the most powerful of those ministries, the Planning Ministry, was a member of the Sunni bloc but left it in order to stay in his post after the boycott began. Mr. Samarrai said that the most likely arrangement was that Mr. Baban would remain head of the Planning Ministry and that another ministry would be given to the Sunnis.
The list of names that Tawafiq would nominate for the ministries was also still being negotiated within the bloc, Mr. Samarrai said. “Now we are discussing the details,” he said.
The official government television channel, Iraqiya, appeared to confirm the deal, following a meeting between Mr. Maliki and David Miliband, the visiting foreign secretary of Britain. Iraqiya said the prime minister “said that reconciliation has proved a success and all political blocs will return to the government.”
Also on Thursday, court and legal officials said that the capital case against Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, would begin next week. The case involves the execution of more than 40 Iraqi merchants in 1992.
A lawyer for Mr. Aziz, Badi Arif, said on Thursday that Mr. Aziz was having unspecified health problems while in prison but that “his morale is high.” |
