Analysis: Iraq PM Gets Double Good News

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, center, flanked by his Shiite interior minister Jawad al-Bolani, left, and Sunni Defence Minister Iraqi Army Gen. Abdul-Qader Mohammed Jassim al-Mifarji, right, speaks to the media in Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, June 8, 2006. Iraq's parliament approved new ministers of defense, interior and national security on Thursday, ending a three week stalemate among Iraq's sectarian and ethnic parties over the crucial posts. (AP Photo/Ahmad al-Rubaye, Pool) (Ahmad Al-rubaye - AP)

CAIRO, Egypt -- It was a day filled with rare good news for Iraq's new prime minister: Not only did he announce the death of the country's most-feared terror leader, he also won approval for new ministers on security, charged with stopping the violence in Iraq.

With that rapid series of breakthroughs, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki firmly established his control, setting the stage for what he pledges will be a sharp crackdown to restore order. U.S. officials seemed overjoyed, keenly aware that their ability to trim the number of U.S. troops depends on his success.

The three posts that al-Maliki named Thursday are crucial to that effort _ the defense minister to run the army, the interior minister to run the national police and the national security minister to advise the prime minister.

The posts had been deadlocked for weeks by squabbling among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. But the new ministers were quickly approved by Parliament on Thursday, just minutes after al-Maliki announced the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

U.S. military and Iraqi officials said the timing was coincidental; indeed, Iraqi political leaders said the final agreement on the new ministers came late Wednesday, before news of al-Zarqawi's death was known.

If anything, that made the achievement even more impressive.

In the end, al-Maliki _ widely viewed as a pragmatist _ apparently was able to break the Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish logjam over the posts by picking technocrats, less likely to aggravate either old, Saddam Hussein-era prejudices or the country's virulent new sectarian divides.

The Interior Ministry was the hottest button.

Sunnis had accused the previous interior minister, a Shiite, of allowing Shiite death squads to operate from inside his ministry, and were determined to get a more neutral figure this time.

The new interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, is also a Shiite but _ as an independent member of the dominant Shiite United Iraqi Alliance _ is considered so neutral that no Sunnis objected to his name. Almost a political unknown, he had worked, he said, as an engineer in the Iraqi air force until 1999.

The new defense minister, Iraqi Army Gen. Abdul-Qader Mohammed Jassim al-Mifarji, is a Sunni Arab unaffiliated with any party. He was thrown out of the military and Saddam's Baath Party in 1991 after he criticized the invasion of Kuwait and received a seven-year prison term, he said.

"As a defense minister I will work for all Iraqis and will not work according to my tribal, religious and ethnic background," he said after he was named.