Iraq's national unity government finally was inaugurated Saturday after the Parliament approved a list of 36 men and women appointed to the Cabinet of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The government is the first constitutionally based one since President Saddam Hussein's was toppled in 2003. With the inauguration of the national unity government, Iraq's democratic process, started at the initiative of the United States, is complete. But the new government faces the huge and difficult task of ending sectarian violence and bringing reconciliation to the divided country.
U.S. President George W. Bush characterized the formation of the new Iraqi government as a "new day for the millions of Iraqis who want to live in freedom." But as if to remind Mr. al-Maliki of the difficult road lying ahead, a bomb killed at least 19 people in a poor Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad, shortly before Parliament began procedures to approve the new government. In a Sunni town near the Syrian border, a suicide bomber set off explosives inside a police station killing five policemen and wounding 10 others.
The Cabinet of Mr. al-Maliki, who is of the Shiite religious party Dawa, includes Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Yet the interior and defense posts, which are expected to play a central role in ending the insurgency, were not filled. For the time being, the respective functions of these two posts will be carried out by Mr. al-Maliki and his Sunni deputy prime minister, Salam Zikam al-Zubaie.