Iraq's parliament has approved the premier's choices to head the country's crucial defense and interior ministries, giving the country a complete government for the first time since December's election.
In a stormy session, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Thursday presented Shiite Jawad Polani as interior minister, Sunni Abdel Qader al-Obeidi as defense minister and Shiite Shirwan al-Waili to head national security.
All the candidates were approved by an overwhelming majority of the parliament after they read out their credentials and were subjected to questioning from parliamentary members.
But a Sunni deputy from Al-Anbar province said Obeidi should be tried as a war criminal for "participating in the invasion of Fallujah."
When parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani was asked why he was permitting people to speak out in such a fashion, he defended the process as democratic.
"We are doing like our uncle America; it is democracy speaking," he said.
Of the 198 members present and voting, 142 voted for the Obeidi, 182 for Polani and 160 for Waili.
All the three ministers are Iraqi army veterans.
Polani, the Shiite MP and new interior minister, was born in 1960 in Baghdad and hails from Iraq's southern Diwaniyah province.
He was a student of aeronautics engineering from Baghdad's technology university, and was in the former Iraqi army until his retirement in 1999 as a colonel.
On Thursday he promised to work for Iraq in a true "national spirit".
"I promise that I will work with a national spirit as a responsible minister for the whole of Iraq and all Iraqis," he told the parliament.
Defense Minister Obeidi participated in the Iran-Iraq war but opposed the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's army following which he was banished from the army, he told the lawmakers Thursday.
"I was also kicked out from the Baath party and they also jailed me for seven years. However I joined the new Iraqi army after the fall of the regime in 2003," Obeidi said.
Obeidi has led Iraqi ground forces in western Iraq, one of the deadliest regions in the country.
Waili, an engineer in the former army, was born in 1957 in the southern city of Nasiriyah.
Despite being in the former army, he had not participated in the wars with Iran or Kuwait, he said, adding he was arrested by Saddam's forces in 19
91 during the Shiite uprising in the south.
"I have also studied law in a night college in Basra and intend to work for Iraq," he said.