Baghdad: Iraqi lawmakers approved Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi’s nominees for the remaining posts in his government Saturday, including the critical posts of defence and interior ministers amid the fight against Daesh.
Control over the two powerful security ministries has long been a source of tension among Iraq’s feuding political factions.
The US and other countries have been pushing for a more representative government that can reach out to Sunnis, who felt marginalised by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki.
Sunni discontent is widely seen as having fuelled Daesh’s dramatic advances in Iraq since June.
On Saturday, lawmakers approved Mohammad Salem Al Ghabban, a Shiite lawmaker with Al Abadi’s State of Law political bloc, as Iraq’s new minister of interior. Khaled Al Obeidi, a Sunni lawmaker from the besieged city of Mosul, was selected for the post of defence minister.
Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish politician and Iraq’s long-serving foreign minister, was named minister of finance, having previously been voted in as deputy prime minister.
Lawmakers approved most of Al Abadi’s Cabinet on September 8 and officially voted him in as prime minister, bringing a formal end to Al Maliki’s eight-year rule, but Al Abadi requested a delay in naming defence and interior ministers because lawmakers had not agreed on his proposed candidates.
On September 16, Al Abadi put forward Sunni lawmaker Jaber Al Jabberi as his candidate for defence minister and Shiite lawmaker Riyad Ghareeb as his pick for interior minister, but both were rejected by parliament.
Al Maliki held both the defence and interior minister posts himself after his re-election in 2010 because lawmakers could not reach an agreement on them. That fuelled concerns that he was monopolizing power.
Other posts named Saturday included the role of minister of tourism, given to Shiite lawmaker Adel Fahd Al Shirshab, and the head of the women’s ministry was named as Kurdish lawmaker Bayan Nouri.
