BAGHDAD, May 9 (UPI) -- Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki said Tuesday he hopes to announce his new government in 48 hours, despite disagreement over certain portfolios.
Jawad told a press conference in Baghdad that Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish parliament blocs have nominated their candidates for the key ministries of defense, interior, finance and foreign affairs, stressing that no final agreement was reached on the candidate for the oil ministry.
"The portfolios of defense and interior will be allocated to independent candidates who are not affiliated with any militia," Jawad said.
He said the reasons for delaying the announcement of the government is mainly "to give all political forces participating in the government a chance."
Jawad said consultations for forming the government have been completed and "90 percent of the work is done but we want to give officials more time to finish their work."
He said the new government's top priority will be to restore security and order and put an end to the cycle of violence which claimed the lives of six Iraqi journalists in the past 36 hours.
A source at the Baghdad-based press freedoms monitoring center said the bodies of two journalists were discovered Tuesday, raising to six the number of press people slain in three days.
One journalist working for a local television station was kidnapped and his body found a day later; another employed by the semi-official al-Sabah newspaper was killed in an explosion on Sunday and a third was shot in the city of Basra in southern Iraq.
