BAGHDAD - Iraq`s first elected government in half a century finally took shape Thursday when a former rebel leader took oath as its first Kurdish president and named a top religious Shiite as his prime minister.
Jalal Talabani, who becomes the first Kurdish head of state in an Arab country, appointed Ibrahim Jaafari as prime minister, ending weeks of political bickering between parties that frustrated Iraqis and the international community alike.
Talabani, 71, vowed to bring reconciliation to a country torn by decades of ethnic tension and totalitarian rule as he took the oath of office at a historic session of parliament.
He was supposed to formally nominate Jaafari during the same ceremony but the parliament session was adjourned right after Talabani finished the Kurdish-language part of his acceptance speech.
This forced Talabani to make an impromptu announcement to appoint the new prime minister, with perplexed MPs already standing up on their feet in a noise-filled room, which angered Jaafari`s partisans.
In his acceptance speech, Talabani proposed an amnesty for insurgents who have attempted to wreck Iraq`s transition to democracy with daily attacks against security forces and civilians.
"We must find a political and peaceful solution with Iraqis who have been led astray by terrorism and grant them an amnesty," said Talabani, whose rise to power is a major advance for Iraq`s long oppressed Kurdish community.
He said insurgents "should be invited to participate in the democratic process and be given the chance to benefit from the acquired freedoms, even if they call for the withdrawal of foreign or occupation forces, as they call them."
He also held out a hand to Iraq`s Sunni minority, who dominated the country politically under the regime of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein and every government before that, but largely boycotted January`s landmark elections in frustration at their perceived marginalisation.
"We have to continue dialogue to complete a full understanding with our brothers, the Sunni Arabs, who are key component of our nation" he said.
But Jaafari was markedly less enthusiastic about the amnesty.
"We will deal with each suspect according to the gravity of the crime, but as we announce an amnesty for those who may qualify for it, we will be merciless with those that raped our women in Mosul and killed them as you saw on television," he said referring to a nightly programme on state television showing confessions of alleged insurgents.
Shiite Islamist Adel Abdel Mahdi and outgoing Sunni president Ghazi al-Yawar were sworn in as Talabani`s two deputies completing a three-man presidency that together nominated the prime minister.
New prime minister Jaafari heads the religious Dawa party which is part of the Shiite bloc that swept the board in the January 30 election, but he nonetheless commands respect across Iraq`s ethnic divisions.
Jaafari vowed to swiftly put in place a new government to replace the outgoing prime minister Iyad Allawi.
"I hope to complete the formation of my government within two weeks, even though I have a month to do it," he told reporters.
Sunnis have obtained the promise of the defence ministry among at least six cabinet posts in the government, even though they have just 16 MPs in the 275-member parliament.
The Shiites will get the oil ministry, which Kurds had been ruthlessly fighting for, said Jaafari senior partisan Jawad al-Maliki.
But sectarian considerations won out over purely democratic ones in the allocation of top jobs as both the majority Shiites and the second-placed Kurds strove to woo the Sunni Arab former elite away from violence and back into the political mainstream.
Some Shiite leaders expressed anger at the prospect of retaining the sectarian carve-up that characterised the interim governments installed under the US-led occupation, despite the parliamentary majority the long-oppressed community won in January`s elections.
Sheikh Abdul Karim al-Mahamadawi, who led Shiite resistance to Saddam`s regime in the marshlands of southern Iraq in the early 1990s, paid tribute to Talabani`s record as a rebel fighter but said he opposed his election simply because he was a Kurd.
"I am against the quota system," Mahamadawi told AFP. "This is how this next government is being formed and it looks like it will even be enshrined in the permanent constitution.
"I call it canned democracy offered by America, or even worse and more dangerous, the forbidden fruit that the devil tempted Adam with."
Even some Sunni MPs questioned the wisdom of establishing a Lebanese-style political system dominated by sectarian loyalties.
"The old wounds are getting deeper," said Sheikh Fawaz al-Jarba, Yawar`s second cousin.
"This is a farce, everything is pre-ordained before lawmakers convene," said Jarba, who, as a chief of the Shammar tribal confederation which straddles Iraq`s ethnic divide, was elected as an MP for the Shiite alliance even though he is Sunni.
In a reminder of the continuing strength of the insurgency in Sunni areas, 12 civilians were wounded by a suicide bomber in the northwestern town of Tall Afar on Thursday.
Four policemen were also wounded by a booby-trapped car in Saddam`s hometown of Tikrit, security sources said.

04/07/2005 16:59 GMT