Government approves key Iraqi security ministers

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's parliament approved three key security officials Thursday, ending an impasse that had threatened Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's plan for Iraqis to gradually take over security from U.S. and other foreign troops.

Meanwhile, at least five bombings killed at least 39 people and wounded about 120.

The new appointments are considered crucial for al-Maliki's government to implement a plan that foresees Iraqi soldiers and police taking over responsibility for Iraq's security within 18 months. That would open the way for the eventual withdrawal of foreign troops.

Efforts to name the defense, interior and national-security ministers had been snarled by squabbling among the Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties in the unity government that took office May 20. Frictions were fed by the surge in sectarian conflict in recent months.

Iraq's new defense minister is Gen. Abdul-Qader Mohammed Jassim al-Mifarji, a Sunni Arab. Members of that formerly dominant minority are the backbone of the insurgency, and many people feel it is crucial to have Sunnis deeply involved in the new government to weaken support for the guerrillas.

The other two ministers came from the Shiite majority — Jawad al-Bolani as interior minister and Sherwan al-Waili as minister of state for national security.

Sunni Arabs demanded the Defense Ministry, which runs the military, to balance the Shiites' control of the Interior Ministry, which oversees police forces and some security services. The National Security Ministry runs Iraq's anti-terror efforts and its war against corruption.

Al-Mifarji, who is not affiliated with any Sunni Arab party, told the 275-member legislature that he graduated from the Iraqi military academy in 1969 and was thrown out of the army and Saddam Hussein's Baath party in 1991 after he criticized the invasion of Kuwait. He said that led a seven-year prison sentence.

"All my properties were confiscated," he said. "In 2003, my only house was returned. Then I joined the new Iraqi army as the commander of operations room and then commander of military operations in western Iraq, and finally the commando units of the infantry."

Al-Mifarji said that as defense minister, "I will work for all Iraqis and will not work according to my tribal, religious and ethnic background. I will be only an Iraqi and will spare no effort."

Al-Bolani is an independent member of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite political bloc. He is an aeronautical-engineering graduate of Baghdad's University of Technology and worked as an engineer in the Iraqi air force.

Al-Waili is a member of the Iraqi Dawa Party, which is not related to the Dawa party to which the prime minister belongs. A graduate of Iraq's military school of engineering, he was jailed following the Shiite uprising of 1991 in the southern city of Basra, which came after a U.S.-led alliance drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait.