US (mostly) lets Iraq form its cabinet

It's taken nearly three months for Iraq's new leadership to put together a government that will last some eight months until December, when new elections - based on a constitution to be written by the fall - are to take place.

But the government of at least 32 ministers, which could finally be presented for the national assembly's approval Thursday after weeks of haggling among religious factions and political parties, is both a work of promise and of considerable foreboding, say Iraq experts and consultants who have been working with Iraqi leaders.

That the politically ascendant Shiites and Kurds made room for six Sunni ministers, despite their absence from January's elections and association with the former regime, demonstrates the kind of hard power-sharing necessary for national unity. The Sunnis' portfolio even includes the coveted defense minister slot.

Still, some Shiite leaders were holding out Wednesday for changes in some Sunni ministerial candidates, accusing them of close ties to the former Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein. At the same time, some experts fear that a kind of "government by numbers" so heavily focused on sectarian divides could portend years of instability and ineffective government.

For the most part, analysts agree that it's an imperfect political process the US has been right to leave basically to the Iraqis, despite some last-minute phone calls and high-profile public pressure from Washington to get a government going.

The US has wisely lifted the heavy thumb it pressed on the Iraqis during the occupation led by Paul Bremer, says Judith Yaphe, a former Iraq specialist for the CIA. She believes Washington needs to let the Iraqis sort out their own future and make their own mistakes. "It's like having a teenage driver," says Ms. Yaphe, now at the National Defense University in Washington. "The good news is your teenager can finally drive, but the bad news is your teenager can drive. At some point you have to let them loose. You can't script it."

This week Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon briefing that "we must have a cabinet appointed here very quickly." Earlier, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered similar public chiding. Such pressure is appropriate, especially given that the 140,000 US troops in Iraq continue to face daily attacks, experts say, but any additional "hand holding" risks complicating the American presence - especially if the situation remains unstable.

"The administration has been right not to try to micromanage this process as we have in the past," says Jon Alterman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The Iraqis have to feel this is theirs, and if they fail, they have to feel that the failure is theirs."

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