BAGHDAD // Iraqi MPs approved Haidar Al Abadi’s proposed cabinet on Monday night, making him the new premier, but key security posts remain unfilled even as the country battles to regain ground from militants.
Mr Abadi has asked for a week to fill the missing posts, including interior and defence, during which time he will run the ministries in an acting capacity.
The previous Iraqi government also began with various posts unfilled, and acting ministers served for the next four years.
Iraq has been under heavy international pressure to approve a broad-based government to unite the various communities against a sweeping offensive led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militant group that has overrun swathes of Iraq since June.
The outgoing government has faced criticism that by alienating the Sunni Arab minority, it helped create conditions that revitalised Sunni militants including ISIL.
Mr Al Abadi pledged on Monday to resolve disputes with the country’s autonomous Kurdish region that had jeopardised their participation in his government.
“My government is committed to solve all suspended issues with the Kurdistan Regional Government,” he said in a speech to parliament outlining his proposed government programme.
The issue of Kurdish participation in the government was a major potential sticking point, and their delegation flew from Baghdad to the city of Sulaimaniyah in Kurdistan on Monday to discuss the issue with senior political leaders.
US deputy secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Brett McGurk and UN Iraq envoy Nickolay Mladenov also attended the meeting, an official from the Kurdish Goran Movement said.
When the parliament session opened, Kurdish MPs had apparently not received final word on participation and were waiting in the cafeteria, but they later arrived.
The Kurdish region and Baghdad are at odds over various long-running disputes on issues including territory and the country’s vast oil and gas resources.
Relations between the two sides worsened considerably this year over what the Kurds said were late and insufficient payments by Baghdad to the region, which saw salaries in Kurdistan go unpaid.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber struck a meeting of Sunni tribal fighters and Iraqi security troops on Monday, killing 16, just hours before parliament met to vote on a new government.
The bomber drove an explosives-laden Humvee, apparently seized from the Iraqi military, into the gathering of a major Sunni tribe, the Jabour, and security forces in Duluiyah, some 80 kilometres north of Baghdad, police said.
The explosion killed 16 and wounded at least 55 people, said the officer.
The town of Duluiyah fell briefly to ISIL for few days in July but the Jabour tribesmen, who have aligned themselves with the Iraqi forces in the battle against the extremists, took it back.
After the suicide bombing, militants crossed a small river on Duluiyah’s outskirts and attacked the town, setting off fierce clashes.
ISIL claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack, saying two Saudi suicide bombers had targeted a police building and the gathering of Sunni militiamen.
Iraqi officials said there was only one attacker.
The rampage by ISIL fighters has become Iraq’s worst crisis since the 2011 withdrawal of US troops. The militants’ summer offensive stunned Iraqi security forces and the military, which melted away and withdrew as ISIL fighters overran the northern cities of Mosul and Tikrit, as well as small towns and villages in their path.
Since then, Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias have been fighting against the militants with assistance from US airstrikes, which contributed to some progress on the ground.
After US airstrikes, Iraqi security forces on Monday retook the Anbar provincial town of Barwana, across the Euphrates River from the town of Haditha.
The parliament session was scheduled to vote on a new government, an important step in fighting ISIL. But political rivals continued negotiating on the proposed lineup for cabinet by prime minister-designate, Haider Al Abadi.
* Agence France-Press and Associated Press