By Terry Friel1 hour, 11 minutes ago
Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki said on Thursday he hoped to form a government within a week after meeting Washington's top defense and foreign affairs officials and two of Iraq's most powerful clerics.
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld flew out, Maliki pledged to fill the key posts of interior and defense ministers with non-sectarian appointees.
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 Shi'ite Muslims, Sunni Arabs and Kurds to combat the violence wracking the country.
"The dialogue is still ongoing with the different parties from which the government will be formed, including on the important ministries," Maliki told reporters after meeting Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy southern city of Najaf.
"God willing, it will be settled next week."
Maliki also met firebrand Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, an influential political leader who condemned the U.S. visit.
"It is a shocking intervention in Iraqi affairs," he told a joint news conference with 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.
As Maliki works toward building a government to avert civil war, gunmen killed a sister of one of the newly appointed vice- presidents on Thursday, the latest high level assassination.
Meysoun al-Hashemi, sister of Sunni Vice-President Tareq al -Hashemi, was gunned down in her car in Baghdad. Hashemi's brother was killed on April 13 and the brother of another leading Sunni politician was also kidnapped and killed this month.
CHOOSE WISELY - U.S.
Last October, the brother of the other vice president, Shi'ite Adel Abdul Mahdi, was also murdered.
Rice and Rumsfeld arrived on Wednesday for talks with 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 recognize the challenges before them, recognize that the Iraqi people expect their government to be able to meet those challenges," Rice told reporters at the U.S. embassy in the heavily guarded Green Zone.
She said the leaders they met, including 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 get about the work of dealing with the security situation, dealing with the economic situation."
Last weekend, President Jalal Talabani asked Maliki to form a coalition cabinet to end a bloody insurgency and mounting sectarian violence that threatens to drag Iraq into full-scale civil war.
Rice said the government must have a "non-sectarian mindset." From Iraq, she headed to a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Bulgaria while Rumsfeld went to Washington.
Sistani, whose backing and guidance is crucial for any Iraqi Shi'ite political leader, urged Maliki to end the violence.
"The next government must work in all its capacity to regain full sovereignty over the country, politically, security-wise and economically," a Sistani aide said.
In one of the worst recent attacks on U.S.-led forces, a roadside bomb killed three Italian soldiers in Iraq on Thursday, 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 which it plans to withdraw by year-end.
Prodi, who narrowly won this month's elections and must balance demands for an immediate pullout from his far left with his own pledges of a gradual withdrawal.