At least eight people were killed in violence in Iraq on Thursday amid a continued power vacuum as prime minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki missed a personal deadline to present his new Cabinet. Though the constitutional deadline for the new Cabinet is not until May 21, al-Maliki had pledged to have the government ready by Wednesday.
Iraqi prime minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki said on Tuesday that he expected to have his Cabinet line-up ready for approval in two weeks as hectic lobbying began for key ministerial posts. ”I believe that in the next 15 days we can have a new government and present it to Parliament,” Maliki told state television.
Shi’ite leader Jawad al-Maliki has been given 30 days to form Iraq’s first full-term post-Saddam Hussein government after being nominated as prime minister to end a four-month political deadlock. United States President George Bush hailed al-Maliki’s nomination on Saturday.
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/ 21 February 2006
At least 21 people were killed when a car-bomb ripped through a mostly-Shi’ite market in southern Baghdad on Tuesday as visiting British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw appealed for Iraqi unity. The evening explosion devastated the Abu Dshir general market in the capital’s southern district of Dura as people went about their evening shopping, also wounding 27, police said.
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/ 13 December 2005
The assassination on Tuesday of a Sunni candidate in Iraq’s election cast a shadow over expatriate voting for a new Parliament that many hope will restore stability to the war-torn country. The election has been billed as a critical democratic step for Iraq nearly three years after the United States-led invasion.
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/ 6 December 2005
The gripping trial of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein over a Shi’ite massacre 23 years ago continued on Tuesday as the court heard chilling evidence from a tearful woman testifying from behind a curtain. Tuesday’s hearing got off to a chaotic start as the presiding judge called a recess just minutes after ”witness A” began to testify.
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/ 21 October 2005
The defence lawyer for a co-defendant of Saddam Hussein who was kidnapped just a day after the opening of the former Iraqi dictator’s trial over a Shi’ite massacre has been killed, officials said on Friday. The body of Saadoun Janabi was found with a bullet to his head in the impoverished northern Baghdad neighbourhood of Ur.
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/ 19 October 2005
Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein goes on trial on Wednesday on charges of crimes against humanity in the first of what could be several cases over atrocities committed during his quarter-century in power. Saddam’s lawyer said he would seek an adjournment of at least three months.
Under United Nations pressure, Iraq’s Parliament on Wednesday reversed changes to an electoral law that critics had charged made it harder to reject the new and deeply divisive Constitution in next week’s referendum. The move came as thousands of United States troops widened a sweep for al-Qaeda fighters in a new offensive.
Iraqi leaders tried on Wednesday to persuade furious Sunni Arabs to sign up to the draft Constitution, a day before the charter goes to Parliament where conservative Shi’ites and secularist Kurds can ensure its victory. Some Sunni negotiators have even called the country’s post-Saddam Hussein Constitution it ”illegal”.