AMMAN: Tuesday’s burial of slain Shia leader Ayatollah Syed Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim sets the stage for the newly formed Iraqi cabinet to set to work, but academics and analysts have cast doubt on its ability to bring an increasingly chaotic situation under control.

Some commentators have predicted Iraq will slip into “further anarchy and stepped up anti-coalition resistance”.

“I don’t think al-Hakim’s death will lead to internal fighting between Shias and Sunnis as some expected, but it will rather prompt Shias and Sunnis to close ranks to step up resistance against occupation troops,” said Gazi Rababaa, Professor of Political Science at the University of Jordan.

“We also believe that both the new cabinet and the Governing Council will not be able to restore stability in Iraq, and anarchy there is set to increase, simply because when totalitarian regimes disintegrate, a state of prolonged instability ushers in, taking into account that millions of Saddam supporters are still at large,” he added.

The Iraq Governing Council on Monday announced a 25-member cabinet reflecting the sectarian and ethnic make-up of the US-appointed ruling body.

Al-Hakim, chairman of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), was killed on Friday along with 83 others in a huge car bomb explosion. So far no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

In an audiotape purported to be from Saddam Hussein, the former president denied charges that his supporters were behind the blast.

Senior Shia leaders inside and outside Iraq pointed fingers at US troops and Israeli intelligence as well as Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

According to Najaf governor Haider Mayali, five Iraqis were being interrogated in connection with the blast which killed al-Hakim.

The distinguished Shia leader was one of 13 Shia members in the 25-member Iraq Governing Council appointed in July by the US administrator Paul Bremer.

Shias received 13 portfolios in the first cabinet to be appointed in Iraq since the collapse of Saddam’s regime, while other ethnic and sectarian groups shared the rest of the 25 ministries.

“In my opinion, the formation of the cabinet along ethnic and sectarian lines will strip the Governing Council of any legitimacy and will not help rectify the Iraqi situation,” said Mustafa Ani, advisor at the London-based Royal Institute for Strategic Studies.

“It is a very dangerous development which indicates that the Americans had an old target to fragment Iraq through the partition of the country on a sectarian basis, and they are now accomplishing their objective,” he said.

The rotating chairman of the Governing Council, Ahmed Chalabi, on Monday defended the formation of the new cabinet and denied the allegation that its make-up would “perpetuate sectarian and ethnic divisions” in the country.

“This is nonsense,” he said. However, he conceded that the US forces were coming to the conclusion that they were “unable to handle the security situation in Iraq satisfactorily”.

“Stability will not return to Iraq before Iraqis take up the total security responsibility,” he said in an interview with the Doha-based Al Jazeera satellite channel.

He revealed that he had received strong hints from Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa that the Iraq Council would be allowed to take up Iraq’s seat at the League when Arab foreign ministers meet in Cairo on September 9.

In an interview with the same network, Musa said “nothing so far has been decided and the final decision rests with the foreign ministers”.

Rababaa expressed the belief that the Iraqi Council would finally have access to the Arab League “because Arab states will succumb gradually to US pressure in this direction”.—dpa