IRAQ: Prime minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki said yesterday he hoped to form a government within a week after meeting Washington's top defence and foreign affairs officials and two of Iraq's most powerful clerics.
As US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld flew out, Mr Maliki pledged to fill the key posts of interior and defence ministers with non-sectarian appointees.
Mr Maliki has 30 days from last Saturday to present his cabinet to parliament for approval but has said he wants to move faster on creating a grand coalition of majority Shia Muslims, Sunni Arabs and Kurds to combat the violence wracking the country.
In one of the worst recent attacks on US-led forces, a roadside bomb killed three Italian soldiers in Iraq yesterday, exposing long-standing divisions within Romano Prodi's government-in-waiting on the timing of a withdrawal. The explosion occurred in the city of Nassiriya, where the Italian contingent is based. Italy has about 2,600 troops in Iraq who it plans to withdraw by year end.
As Mr Maliki works towards building a government to avert civil war, gunmen killed a sister of one of the newly appointed vice-presidents yesterday, in the latest high-level assassination.
Meysoun al-Hashemi, sister of Sunni vice-president Tareq al-Hashemi, was gunned down in her car in Baghdad. Ms Hashemi's brother was killed on April 13th, and the brother of another leading Sunni politician was also kidnapped and killed this month. Last October, the brother of the other vice-president, Shia Adel Abdul Mahdi, was also murdered.
Meanwhile, Mr Maliki spoke to reporters after meeting Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy southern city of Najaf. "The dialogue is still ongoing with the different parties from which the government will be formed, including on the important ministries. God willing, it will be settled next week."
Mr Maliki also met firebrand Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, an influential political leader who condemned the US visit.
"It is a shocking intervention in Iraqi affairs," he told a joint news conference with Mr Maliki, adding the new government's first duty was to ensure Iraq's stability and independence, including a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops.
Ms Rice and Mr Rumsfeld arrived on Wednesday for talks with Mr Maliki on his efforts to draft a cabinet, a strongly symbolic visit showing how much importance Washington places on the task. "I think it's fair to say that all these Iraqi leaders recognise the challenges before them, recognise that the Iraqi people expect their government to be able to meet those challenges," Ms Rice told reporters at the US embassy in the heavily guarded Green Zone.
She said the leaders they met, including Mr Maliki, outgoing prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and former prime minister Iyad Allawi, were "focused" and "serious". "Obviously, the key now is to get the government up and running, to get ministers who are capable and who also will reflect the value of a national unity government, and then to set about the work of dealing with the security situation, dealing with the economic situation."
Last weekend, President Jalal Talabani asked Mr Maliki to form a coalition cabinet to end a bloody insurgency and mounting sectarian violence that threatens to drag Iraq into full civil war.
Ms Rice said the government must have a "non-sectarian mindset". From Iraq, she headed to a Nato foreign ministers' meeting in Bulgaria while Mr Rumsfeld went to Washington.
Ayatollah al-Sistani, whose backing is crucial for any Iraqi Shia political leader, urged Mr Maliki to end violence.