August 26, 2007	Sunday	Sha’aban 12, 1428

KUWAIT CITY, Aug 25: Health Minister Maasuma al-Mubarak, Kuwait’s first woman cabinet member, has resigned following a deadly hospital fire, pre-empting plans by Islamist MPs to call her to account in parliament.

The government of the oil-rich Gulf emirate announced on Saturday that Mubarak’s resignation, tendered on Friday night, had been accepted.

Hours earlier, two Sunni Islamist lawmakers tabled a request to grill her over Thursday’s blaze, which killed two patients and injured 19 others, as well as over alleged financial abuses in her ministry and deteriorating health services.

Mubarak made history when she became the first female minister in the conservative Arab state in June 2005, taking the planning and administrative development portfolio, one month after parliament passed a bill granting women political rights.

The US-educated liberal and leading women’s rights activist, who wears the Muslim hijab or head cover, has since also served as communications minister and was given the health portfolio in the cabinet formed last March.

Mubarak, in her late 50s, also became the first woman MP when she joined the government, because cabinet ministers automatically become members of parliament in Kuwait.

Her departure leaves only one woman in the cabinet. Information Minister Abdullah al-Muhailbi will now take charge of the health ministry, Saturday’s government announcement said.

In her letter of resignation submitted to Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, Mubarak accepted “political and moral” responsibility for the hospital fire which is currently being investigated, the leading daily Al-Qabas reported.

But she also said that she had come under fire from some MPs from the moment she took over the troubled health ministry “for reasons which are no secret to you”. Mubarak, a member of Kuwait’s Shia minority, was apparently referring to the opposition of Sunni Islamist MPs to her appointment to high office because of her combined Shia and liberal credentials.—AFP