Iraq's Prime Minister Jawad Maliki vowed to use "maximum force against terrorism" on Sunday, as bombs killed at least 19 people in Baghdad during the first meeting of his national unity Cabinet. In a reminder of the task Maliki faces in stemming bloodshed and drawing angry, fearful Iraqis back from the brink of civil war, a suicide bomber killed at least 13 people and wounded 18 in a crowded restaurant popular with police. Six people died in two other bombings in Baghdad, though recent violence is less than that which greeted the Shiite-led interim government a year ago — testament, officials say, to progress by US and Iraqi forces against Al Qaeda car bombers.A day after parliament approved the Cabinet of Shiites, minority Sunnis and Kurds, and its programme to combat violence and consolidate the US-sponsored transition to democracy, US President George W. Bush said the new government marked a "new day for the millions of Iraqis who want to live in freedom."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was too early to commit to sending home some of the 130,000 US troops and said top US military commanders will meet the Iraqi government over the coming weeks to discuss the roles of Iraqi and US forces. "It is premature before we've even had this discussion with the Iraqi government to start giving firm commitments on what the drawdown will look like," Rice told Fox television.
Maliki said in the programme he read to parliament he will work to complete rebuilding Iraq's US-trained armed forces so that foreign troops could leave within an "objective timetable." Bush, who is eager to show signs of progress in a war he launched three years ago to remove Saddam Hussein and is costing almost daily casualties to American troops, also said the new government marked a "new chapter" in Iraqi-US relations. He called Maliki and other Iraqi leaders to congratulate them.
Briefing reporters after the cabinet met in Baghdad, Maliki, a tough-talking Shiite Islamist, said his government would hold out the offer of dialogue to Sunni rebels who lay down weapons and finish off militias — a tall order given the attachment his Shiite and Kurdish allies maintain to their own armed groups. "We will use maximum force against terrorism, but we also need a national initiative" for reconciliation, he said.
"Militias, death squads, terrorism, killings and assassinations are not normal and we should put an end to the militias." Bush's envoy to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Maliki's performance this year would be vital: "The next six months will be truly critical for Iraq, to deal with reconciliation and uniting Iraqis. Problems there will be, because this process of state and nation building and fighting terror take time." Another senior Western official in Baghdad cautioned that sectarian and ethnic divisions remained explosive: "A lot of things can still go wrong ... It's not a few months' job. If you expect a functioning Western democracy in Iraq three years after a dictator like Saddam, you're being unrealistic."