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| Iraq |
| Sadr City bombing kills 10 |
| 2006-05-20 |
| A bomb killed at least 10 people in east Baghdad among a crowd of poor Shi'ite labourers gathering for work on Saturday, hours before Iraq's parliament prepared to confirm a new, national unity government in office. Initial casualty reports from police and medical sources said at least 28 others were wounded. The attack in the Sadr City neighborhood was typical of bombings by minority Sunni Islamist groups like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq. Witnesses and police said the bomb appeared to have been planted in a spot where the attackers knew large crowds of men would gather, hoping to be hired for a day's casual labor. Such spots have been targeted in the past. Parliament is due to sit at 11 a.m. (0700 GMT) to approve a government that may hold full sovereign powers for the four-year term of the legislature, ending months of inertia that have seen sectarian bloodshed mount. Launching a crucial new phase in the U.S.-backed project to install democracy, Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki struck a basic deal on Friday that left the key posts of interior and defense minister vacant, aides and top negotiators said. There may be some fine-tuning at the last minute but, with jobs for nearly all parliamentary groups barring small Shi'ite and Sunni parties that refused to join, parliamentary approval for Maliki's ministers is likely to be a formality. The government can be sure of an enthusiastic welcome in Washington, where frustration with Iraqis' sectarian and ethnic haggling has grown over the five months since an election hailed as a final step from Saddam Hussein's dictatorship to democracy. "For the first time, Sunnis, Kurds and Shias participate with a four-year mandate," a senior U.S. official said in Washington. "This is an opportunity to make some changes." For President George W. Bush, who launched the invasion in 2003 in the name of Iraqi freedom and ending a perceived threat from Saddam, stability is key to bringing home 130,000 American troops -- a move that might stem his falling approval ratings. Iraqis too, who turned out in large numbers across all the rival communities, have been growing impatient for a leadership that can address their massive problems -- security certainly, but also a devastated economy and poor basic public services. Under a constitutional timetable, Maliki's 30 days to form a government end on Monday. Despite confident assertions last month that he would need only a week or two, wrangling among and within Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs came close to thwarting him, as it did his ally and predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Still, the key security posts at interior and defense have eluded his dealmaking skills, even though all parties are agreed that the jobs should go to a Shi'ite and Sunni respectively. If no 11th-hour solution is found before the 275 members of the Council of Representatives vote in the fortified Green Zone on Saturday, Maliki will occupy the interior ministry for a week and Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi will run defense. Complaints among Saddam's once dominant Sunni minority that the Shi'ite majority brought to power by the U.S. invasion was abusing its control of the interior ministry by running death squads within the police focused attention on the interior post. An upsurge in sectarian killings, some carried out by men in uniform, after February's bombing of a major Shi'ite shrine has prompted growing alarm about the threat of civil war. Hundreds of people are being killed every month in Baghdad alone and tens of thousands have fled their homes. Some fear the communal violence may have gone too far to reverse. Maliki, a tough-talking defender of Shi'ite interests since his return from exile in 2003, has won praise from Sunnis for his willingness to seek consensus. But many question whether a government cobbled together according to religious and ethnic labeling can overcome centrifugal forces tearing Iraq apart. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |