Iraq's Governing Council, the US-led administration and the United Nations agreed on Saturday on the cabinet that will serve in an Iraqi government due to take power on June 30, a senior Council member said.
"The Governing Council, Bremer and Lakhdar Brahimi agreed on the list," the Council member told Reuters, referring to the US Iraq administrator Paul Bremer and UN envoy Brahimi.
"It is not 100 percent certain that the nominees will accept it but it is pretty sure they will."
The only point of dispute remaining was over the relatively ceremonial post of the president, who will have two deputies.
The most powerful post, of prime minister, went on Friday to Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia who ran an exile opposition party to Saddam Hussein with backing from the CIA.
Technocrat Thamir Ghadban, who briefly ran Iraq's vital oil industry after the fall of Saddam, had been named oil minister, the Council member said.
Kurdish politician Hoshiyar Zebari, the current foreign minister, would be defence minister while fellow Kurd Barham Salih would take over the Foreign Ministry.
Salih, of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, has been prime minister in his native region.
Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shia, was nominated to be finance minister. Samir Sumaidy, a Sunni, would stay on as interior minister.
Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni Muslim who was foreign minister of Iraq in the 1960s before Saddam came to power, is, as widely expected, the frontrunner for the relatively ceremonial post of president, the Governing Council member said.
However, Kurds and some Shia Muslims on the Council were resisting Pachachi and putting forward the name of Ghazi Yawar, a Sunni engineer who holds the rotating presidency of the Council at the moment.
"This is the only point of disagreement left about the interim government," the Council member said.
The vice presidents are expected to be a Shia and a Kurd.
Brahimi is trying to help US officials and the Governing Council select a 30-member team, including 26 ministers, that reflects the ethnic and religious make-up of Iraq. Shia Muslims are a 60 percent majority but Sunnis held most power.
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