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Prime minister vows shakeup as sign of resolve

Maliki says he will reshuffle his Cabinet and target political figures aligned with extremists.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 4, 2007

BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister said Saturday that he will reshuffle his Cabinet within two weeks and pursue criminal charges against political figures linked to extremists as a sign of his government's resolve to restore stability during the U.S.-led security crackdown in Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also said Iraq will work hard to ensure the success of a regional security conference.

The conference in Baghdad, tentatively set for next weekend, is expected to bring together all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria, as well as the United States and Britain to find ways to ease this country's security crisis.

Iran has not announced whether it will attend, but Iraqi officials believe that Tehran will send a representative.

Maliki has been under pressure from the United States to bring order into his factious government of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds since it took office last May. Rumors of Cabinet changes have surfaced before, only to disappear because of pressure from coalition members seeking to keep power.

Nevertheless, Maliki said there would be a Cabinet reshuffle "either this week or next."

After the changes are announced, Maliki said he would undertake a "change in the ministerial structure," presumably consolidating and streamlining the 39-member Cabinet.

The prime minister did not say how many Cabinet members would be replaced. But some officials said about nine would lose their jobs, including all six Cabinet members loyal to radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a Maliki ally.

Sadr also controls 30 of the 275 Parliament seats, and his support for Maliki has been responsible for the government's reluctance to crack down on the cleric's Mahdi Army militia, blamed for much of the Shiite-Sunni slaughter of the past year.

U.S. officials had been urging Maliki to cut his ties to Sadr and form a new alliance of mainstream Shiites, moderate Sunnis and Kurds. Maliki had been stalling, presumably at the urging of the powerful Shiite clerical hierarchy that wants to maintain Shiite unity.

But pressure for change has mounted since President Bush ordered 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq last January despite widespread opposition in Congress and among the U.S. public.

On Saturday, Sadr stepped up his rhetoric against a plan expected to establish within days a permanent presence of U.S. and Iraqi troops in Sadr City, a Shiite stronghold named for his father. In the statement, Sadr did not threaten force, but he rejected that negotiations had cleared the way for the joint security station.

Information from the Los Angeles Times was used in this report.

[Last modified March 4, 2007, 00:53:00]