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The Iraqi parliament met under pressure to approve of an inclusive government that has broad support against extremists on Monday. The outgoing government has come under fire from the Sunni Arab community, having helped create conditions which have revitalized Sunni militants, including the Islamic State (IS).
Lawmakers approved Abadi’s cabinet after the vote, making him the new Prime Minister, with many posts in his cabinet, including defense and interior ministers, unoccupied – he has asked for a week to fill the vacancies.
The UN and the US have repeatedly called on premier-designate Haidar al-Abadi to form a broad government. Giving Sunnis more stake in power is seen as a solution the combat the extremists.
New UN human rights chief Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said that the atrocities the IS had committed in the region in its control have already shown Sunnis that extremist rule promised only a “house of blood”.
The crucial Iraqi parliament session opened at 1700 GMT and ended with a vote on the new government. However, there has been no official word from the Abadi camp on any list given to MPs, with political horse-trading expected to have gone down to the last second.
“I expect changes to occur until the final moments”, Samira al-Mussawi, an MP from Abadi’s State of Law alliance, said.
She also said that there were persistent “differences over… positions such as deputy prime ministers and some of the key ministries, such as defense and interior”.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama promised to unveil a strategy to tackle extremists from the IS operating in Syria and Iraq on Wednesday.
In an interview which aired on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Obama, who made his career by opposing the war in Iraq said, “I’m preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from”, adding that he will not return US ground soldiers to Iraq, and will focus more on a “counter-terrorism campaign”.
“We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We’re going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately we’re going to defeat them”, he said.
