Chicago Tribune
BAGHDAD, Iraq — After four months of dangerously destabilizing deadlock, Iraq’s new parliament made brisk progress Saturday toward installing a new government, appointing six of the top leaders and nominating a new prime minister.
President Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader who has served for the past year as Iraq’s interim president, was re-elected to a full four-year term by the legislators, who gathered inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone for only the second time since the result of last December’s election was confirmed in February.
Talabani then invited Shiite politician Jawad al-Maliki to be the next prime minister, setting in motion the process of forming the first full-term government since the fall of Saddam Hussein and raising hopes for an end to the crippling political discord that has contributed to the soaring violence in recent months.
A Sunni leader, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani of the main Sunni bloc, the National Concord Front, was named speaker, in accordance with the informal agreement established during the negotiations for a government last year that the top posts would be distributed among the three main factions.
As the parliamentarians assembled inside the Green Zone, the U.S. military reported the deaths of five American soldiers in roadside bombings in the Baghdad area, four of them in a single attack south of the capital and another in a separate blast.
Elsewhere, 10 Iraqis were reported killed in violence, in a reminder of the huge challenges that will confront whatever government emerges from the process.
At a news conference before the session, al-Maliki pledged to work toward healing the sectarian enmities that have threatened to engulf the country by forming a national unity government that will represent all Iraqis.
“We will work as one family to lead the political process, not based on our differences, sects or parties,” he told reporters.