New government approved in Iraq

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s parliament approved a new government Monday headed by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, but it put off until next week a vote on who will head two of the country’s most powerful ministries: interior, which controls Iraq’s police forces, and defense, which oversees the military.

The candidate to run the Interior Ministry is the head of a Shiite Muslim militia with close ties to Iran whose appointment is likely to be viewed with suspicion by Iraq’s Sunni Muslims.

The delay in approving al-Abadi’s candidates for interior and defense dampened what should have been a triumphant accomplishment, the formation of a government after three chaotic months that saw Islamist extremists take over as much as half of the country.

The approval of the other Cabinet positions brought to an end the time in office of Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite whose eight years as prime minister badly divided Iraq along sectarian and ethnic lines and whose outgoing government was discredited by the collapse of the army in the face of advances by Islamic State militants.

Both al-Maliki and al-Abadi hail from the Shiite Dawa party.

Al-Maliki had claimed the right to continue in his post after his Shiite coalition won a plurality of votes in the May elections.

But the Obama administration, blaming him for the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi military and the country’s sectarian divide, demanded that he step down.

With his internal base eroding, al-Maliki did so last month.

In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry praised the parliament’s approval of most of al-Abadi’s Cabinet as “a major milestone.”

He called the new Cabinet a unity government, but he made no mention of the delay in naming the interior and defense ministers.