BAGHDAD — Leaders of Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim political bloc said Friday that they were willing to give up control over the Interior Ministry and its police forces, a move that could ease both the fears of other sectarian groups and the formation of a new government.
Under Shiite leadership for the last year, the ministry has been accused of providing cover for death squads and militias that have targeted minority Sunni Arabs, stoking mistrust of security forces and spurring the growth of destabilizing armed groups.
Khudair Khuzai, the top Shiite negotiator at talks on forming the government, said in an interview Friday that his bloc had proposed surrendering control over the state's internal security apparatus. In return, the coalition would want control over the Defense Ministry and the country's armed forces, Khuzai said.
Willingness to give up control of the Interior Ministry, which has far more influence than the Defense Ministry over the lives of Iraqis, could reassure Sunnis who fear that Shiites plan to wield the country's domestic security apparatus as a sectarian weapon.
"We don't want to make obstacles and we want the negotiations to proceed quickly," said Khuzai, a confidant of Prime Minister-designate Nouri Maliki.
Despite widespread criticism, the Shiite coalition -- made up of political figures who were hunted, jailed and tortured by Saddam Hussein's security apparatus -- had vowed to not give up control of the ministry. But U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and other ranking U.S. officials have repeatedly called on Iraqi leaders to name nonpolitical professionals without ties to militias to head key security posts.
With a prime minister, presidential council and parliamentary leadership named, the last significant hurdle to a functioning government is filling the Interior and Defense ministries and other sensitive posts such as Oil, Finance and Foreign Affairs.
Iraqi negotiators, often meeting for hours in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone or at the home of President Jalal Talabani, must balance pressure from party loyalists who demand power and patronage with domestic and international pressure to appoint competent, independent technocrats to head government agencies.
U.S. and Iraqi officials fear full-blown civil war if security ministries continue on their sectarian course, with the Interior Ministry becoming the domain of Shiite militias and the Defense Ministry run by Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds. A swapping of ministries, or at least a willingness to shuffle the top posts, could help avoid fears that the country is being carved up into permanent fiefdoms.
