Iraqi prime minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki said Tuesday that he expected to have his cabinet line-up ready for approval in two weeks. "I believe that in the next 15 days we can have a new government and present it to Parliament," the premier-designate told Iraqi state television.An optimistic Maliki, whose nomination in place of outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari cleared the way for an end to the protracted deadlock, said agreements reached during negotiations over his own candidacy applied to posts in a future cabinet and would speed its formation. "We have prior agreements ... that makes our work easier," Maliki said.
Representatives of Iraq's various ethnic and religious groups were quick to stake their claims to ministerial jobs in the national unity government being formed by Maliki. Prominent Kurdish MP Mahmoud Othman told AFP he expected the Kurds to be assigned six of Iraq's 30 ministries, including the Foreign Affairs portfolio they hold in the outgoing government. "If not, we want either the Oil or Finance Ministry," Othman said, adding that the Kurds were not asking for security posts.
The main Sunni parliamentary bloc, the National Accordance Front, played down the progress that had been made, saying it "was still premature to talk about ministries."