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Kurds, Shi'ites agree on power-sharing deal (Anne Barnard and Thanassis Cambanis, March 11, 2005, Boston Globe)

Leaders of the Kurdish and Shi'ite blocs that won the largest shares of the vote in January's elections said yesterday that they have surmounted major disagreements and plan to form a government together -- a move that would formalize a historic shift of power from the long-ruling Sunni minority to two ethnic groups oppressed for decades by Saddam Hussein.

The decision is not final since the two groups are still jockeying over control of powerful ministries handling security, foreign policy, and finances.

But Shi'ite and Kurdish negotiators said last night that they plan to hammer out a memorandum of understanding within the next few days, having reached agreement on how to handle the explosive territorial dispute over the ethnically mixed northern city of Kirkuk.

They said they plan to give the post of prime minister to Dr. Ibrahim Jaafari, the leader of the Shi'ite Islamist-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, and make Jalal Talabani, a secular-leaning Kurdish leader, the president and ceremonial head of state. [...]

Reaching out to disaffected Sunnis in Mosul and elsewhere, the Shi'ite and Kurdish groups, which between them won 78 percent of the seats in the new parliament, promised last night to invite Sunnis to join the government, even though Sunnis largely boycotted the elections. Voter turnout was low in Sunni areas such as Mosul, Ramadi, and Samarra, where the insurgency is most entrenched.

''We intend to form a national unity government," said Hoshyar Zebari, the interim foreign minister and a member of the four-man Kurdish negotiating team. He said they would ask all parties in the 275-member assembly to join, including the third-most popular bloc, with 15 percent of the seats, led by US-backed interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.