Iraq's prime minister-designate completes draft Cabinet list

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- After months of haggling over the makeup of Iraq's post-Saddam Hussein government, Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari has completed a draft list of Cabinet ministers that he is submitting to the president, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Lawmakers said that under the proposal, Shiites would get the majority of the 32 ministries, with the others distributed among Kurdish, Sunni and Christian factions. Three deputy premiers are also proposed -- one each from the majority Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Al-Jaafari met with President Jalal Talabani to discuss the draft, said al-Jaafari's spokesman, Abdul Razak al-Kadhi. If the list is approved by Talabani's three-member presidential council, al- Jaafari could submit it to the National Assembly for a vote as soon as Wednesday.

Iraqi politicians have been under U.S. pressure to form a new transitional government nearly three months after Jan. 30 elections. Insurgents emboldened by the impasse have launched well-coordinated attacks on U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces in recent weeks, killing dozens.

In Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, insurgents fired five mortars at a U.S. base Tuesday, with one landing outside it, said U.S. Maj. Richard Goldenberg. The Americans, who did not return fire, suffered no casualties, he said. However, the errant round wounded an Iraqi civilian, police Lt. Qasim Muhammed said.

The U.S. military said a soldier was killed Sunday by a roadside bomb that struck his convoy near Haswah, 22 miles west of Baghdad. As of Monday, at least 1,570 members of the U.S. military had died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Al-Kadhi provided no details of the Cabinet proposal, but lawmakers from al-Jaafari's Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, the largest bloc in parliament, said it included 32 ministries distributed among the Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni and Christian factions.

Three deputy premiers also are proposed, one each for the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, said alliance lawmaker Ali al-Adib.

But the party of outgoing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was not included in the list, he said. Allawi's Iraqi List controls 40 seats in the National Assembly.

Many Shiites have long resented the secular Allawi, accusing his outgoing administration of having included former members of Saddam's Baath Party, which brutally repressed the majority Shiites and Kurds.

Alliance members, who control 148 seats in the 275-member National Assembly, refuse to give any top posts to former Baathists.

The issue is just one of many obstacles that have bogged down negotiations since the elections. Most Sunnis either boycotted the vote or stayed away for fear of being attacked.

The National Dialogue Council, a coalition of 10 Sunni factions, initially had requested 16 Cabinet seats, but members said Monday they would be willing to settle for fewer.

Al-Jaafari also had to balance demands by Allawi for at least four ministries for his party, including a senior government post and a deputy premiership. Much of the discussion has focused on the key Defense Ministry, which all agree should go to a Sunni, but which Allawi has argued should go to one from his Iraqi List party.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, backed by other top officials, has been trying to persuade politicians from the Shiite majority and their Kurdish allies to wrap up negotiations to form a new government.

"We're going to continue to say it is important to keep momentum in the political process," Rice told reporters in Crawford, Texas, on Monday.

In other developments:

-- U.S. forces in Iraq believe they just missed capturing most- wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a Feb. 20 raid that netted two of his associates, a senior U.S. military official said Tuesday. The official, who discussed the operation on the condition of anonymity, could provide no details on how al-Zarqawi escaped. U.S. forces recovered a computer belonging to al-Zarqawi, the official said, although he did not say how it was obtained.

-- Charles Duelfer, the CIA's top weapons hunter in Iraq, said in his final report that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq "has been exhausted" without finding any. U.S. and British warnings about Saddam Hussein's alleged WMDs had been a main argument for the coalition's invasion of Iraq more than two years ago.

-- A senior U.S. defense official said an American inquiry into the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence officer in Baghdad is expected to conclude that U.S. soldiers generally followed standing instructions when they fired on a car he was in. But the investigation into the March 4 shooting, when the officer was guarding an Italian journalist leaving Iraq after she was freed as a hostage, is expected to raise questions about the rules of engagement at the checkpoint where the shooting occurred, the official said.

Associated Press reporters Sameer N. Yacoub and John J. Lumpkin in Washington contributed to this report.

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