BAGHDAD — Iraq's main Sunni Arab political bloc announced Thursday that it was ready to rejoin the Cabinet, a step that could boost reconciliation efforts and help shore up Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government.
The departure of the Iraqi Accordance Front in August left Maliki with a unity government in name only. Most of the Cabinet posts are held by Shiite Muslims and their ethnic Kurdish allies, and members of the disaffected Sunni minority continue to drive some of the worst insurgent violence.
Maliki's office said Thursday that all political factions were now willing to participate in the government.
"National reconciliation is a success," it said in a statement issued after Maliki met with visiting British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. "The support from all political factions for the government's current activities shows that it is representative of all."
However, Maliki's main rivals among his fellow Shiites, followers of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr, said they had no intention of rejoining the Cabinet. They too walked out last year, along with a handful of other politicians.
Members of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia have been clashing daily with U.S. and Iraqi security forces since the government launched a crackdown late last month. The fighting has been a blow to security gains made in part when Sadr declared a unilateral cease-fire in August.
At least seven people were killed and 28 injured in clashes in the Mahdi Army's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City in the 24 hours ending Thursday evening, police said.
Analysts cautioned that the Sunni bloc's decision to rejoin the Cabinet was unlikely to curb the violence, which has been increasing.
"The group's return marks an effort to stitch together again a national unity government that was from the outset divided, ill-constituted to govern and hardly representative of the nation," said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East director for the International Crisis Group. "For real reconciliation, we will have to wait for this government to reach out to its enemies, not to friends who stepped out in a huff."
The Accordance Front ordered its six Cabinet members to leave last year, accusing Maliki and other Shiite politicians of refusing to share power with the Sunni minority, who were favored under Saddam Hussein. But one member, the Sunni planning minister, remained on the job against the instructions and is no longer considered part of the bloc.
