Iraq Approves New Government

BAGHDAD —Iraqi lawmakers approved a new government on Tuesday that folds in the country’s main ethnic and religious factions, ending nine months of political deadlock.

The vote in Parliament marked a victory for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who secured a second term by sewing together a unity government of Sunni Arabs, politicians from the Kurdish north, religious Shiite parties and lawmakers loyal to a fiery anti-American cleric.

The fractious coalition government passed one major test on Tuesday afternoon simply by agreeing on a government just days before a constitutionally mandated deadline, overcoming fears that competing agendas and egos could shatter the young coalition.

“The hardest thing in the world is to form a partnership government where there are multiple sects, nationalities, ethnicities, religions, blocs and parties,” Mr. Maliki said.

President Obama welcomed the news, congratulating lawmakers from different backgrounds who came together to form the government. “Their decision to form an inclusive partnership government is a clear rejection of the efforts by extremists to spur sectarian division,” Mr. Obama said in a statement from Washington.

The newly appointed cabinet members and lawmakers from Iraq’s 325-member Parliament now face the arduous task of governing a country beset by violence, high unemployment and failing public services more than seven years after the United States invasion.

On Tuesday, there were plenty of grumbles inside the big political tent. Female lawmakers said they had been marginalized, offered only a token job as head of the Women’s Affairs Ministry. The supporters of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, said they had been shortchanged after backing Mr. Maliki. And one smaller Kurdish party pulled out, a reminder of that the partnership government could still erode in a storm of acrimony.

“I do not need anybody to sugarcoat me,” Mr. Maliki said. “I have not satisfied anybody at all. Everybody is angry with me, and everybody is frustrated with me.”

Indeed, one of the few people in the room who got most of what they wanted was Mr. Maliki, whose drab delivery and perpetual five-o’clock shadow belie a powerful negotiator. He told lawmakers he was “very content.”

In addition to maintaining his grip on power, Mr. Maliki kept control of Iraq’s army, police and national security by appointing caretaker leaders to oversee those ministries.

Mr. Maliki named about 30 of the country’s expanded slate of 42 government ministries, leaving the others to be appointed later.

The nine months of political impasse that followed last March’s elections have left Iraqis with a jaded view of their leaders, who jockeyed for power and patronage while the country languished with inadequate electricity and was rocked by a near-daily string of bombings and assassinations.

“The mission is not easy, and it may be affected by some danger and challenges,” said Ayad Allawi, who leads a Sunni-backed coalition that finished narrowly ahead of Mr. Maliki’s own bloc in the March elections. “But we can say that these challenges can be broken with the strength of the political consensus and harmony that the political parties have achieved.”

Mr. Allawi, defeated in his quest to become Iraq’s next prime minister, has said he will accept a post as leader of a newly created strategic-policy council in the new government.