U.S. urges quick formation of Cabinet

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Insurgents killed three American soldiers in the Baghdad area Sunday and fired mortars near the Defense Ministry in a spree of violence that killed at least 27 Iraqis as politicians began work on forming a government.

The largest Sunni Arab party raised new allegations of sectarian killings – one of the most urgent issues facing the new leadership.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the next government must decommission sectarian militias and integrate them into the national armed forces, warning that the armed groups represent the “infrastructure for civil war.”

Sunday’s deaths raised to eight the number of U.S. troops killed in the past two days.

At least 61 American service members have died in April, putting it on track to pass January – with 62 – as the deadliest month this year. It represents a jump over March, which, with 31 deaths, was the lowest monthly toll for Americans since February 2004.

The three soldiers were killed Sunday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb northwest of the capital, the U.S. command said.

Twenty-seven Iraqis died in other violence Sunday, including seven killed when three mortars hit just outside the heavily guarded Green Zone in Baghdad, not far from Iraq’s Defense Ministry.

Police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said it was hard to identify the seven because the powerful blasts and shrapnel had severed their limbs and destroyed their identification cards.

At least eight mortars or rockets exploded about the same time on the other side of the Tigris River in central Baghdad, but they caused no injuries, police said.

In the evening, another mortar hit a house in southern Baghdad, killing a man and wounding two of his relatives. In drive-by shootings in a nearby district, a schoolteacher was gunned down outside her home and a car mechanic was shot in his shop.

The violence underlined the challenge as Prime Minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki began on Sunday the tough task of assembling a Cabinet out of Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties.

President Bush called al-Maliki as well as the Iraqi president and the Parliament speaker – all named on Saturday – and urged the quick formation of a coalition government.

“They have awesome responsibilities to their people,” Bush told military families in the mess hall at the Marine Corps Air Ground Center. “Democracy in Iraq will be a major blow to the terrorists who want to do us harm.”

Al-Maliki, a Shiite, has 30 days to form a government, but the parties are under enormous pressure – from Americans and even Shiite religious leaders – to move quickly without the often intractable haggling over ministry appointments.

The United States is hoping the new government will unify Iraq’s bitterly divided factions behind a program aimed at reining in both the Sunni-led insurgency and the Shiite-Sunni killings that had escalated during months without a stable government.

Khalilzad, a key player in political negotiations since Iraq’s Dec. 15 elections, repeated his call for the quick creation of a Cabinet of “competent” ministers – implying they should be chosen for their skills and not their sectarian or political ties.

Khalilzad also issued a strong warning Sunday against militias, calling them “a serious challenge to stability in Iraq, to building a successful country based on rule of law.”

“There is a need for a decommissioning, demobilization and reintegration plan for these unauthorized military formations,” he told a news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in the northern city of Irbil.

Sunni Arabs say Shiite militias have infiltrated the Interior Ministry – controlled by the biggest Shiite party – and have used death squads to kill Sunnis. Sectarian violence has flared since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

But the killings have gone both ways. Police said the bodies of six Shiites were found Sunday in the mainly Sunni district of Azamiyah in Baghdad, their hands and legs bound and their bodies showing signs of torture. Two more bodies – their identities unknown – were found in a mixed district south of Baghdad.

The head of the Azamiyah district council, Sheik Hassan Sabri Salman, said relatives identified on Sunday the bodies of 14 Sunnis kidnapped last week. The bodies, he said, were handcuffed with signs of torture. Police did not confirm the deaths.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni faction in Parliament and a likely participant in the next Cabinet, warned of “the repercussions of sectarian cleansing.” It urged the new government to stop “the criminal gangs” involved in the killings.